How to Check if an Application is PAM-Aware

PAM stands for Pluggable Authentication Module and its purpose from my understanding is to separate application developers from writing an authentication scheme into their program. Think of it as an authentication “API” for “privilege granting” applications but is flexible how each application authenticates the user. System administrators are given the control and decision to how each application authenticates a user by modifying PAM configs (policies) that could be found in locations such as /etc/pam.d (location may vary depending on the OS).

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You shall not slay the client

Recently, I got the opportunity to attend a two-week-long training in Real-Time Programming For QNX Neutrino RTOS where I am learning the ins and outs of QNX, a real-time microkernel operating system that is a UNIX-like OS. On one of the demos, the trainer showed us a behavior that I thought was impossible. This shook the foundation of my understanding of IPC (Inter-Process Communication) and on signals. However, this is a feature in QNX that does not exist on Linux from my understanding.

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