pam_tally 8 Linux-PAM Manual pam_tally The login counter (tallying) module pam_tally.so file=/path/to/counter onerr=[fail|succeed] magic_root even_deny_root_account deny=n lock_time=n unlock_time=n per_user no_lock_time no_reset audit silent no_log_info pam_tally --file /path/to/counter --user username --reset[=n] --quiet This module maintains a count of attempted accesses, can reset count on success, can deny access if too many attempts fail. pam_tally has several limitations, which are solved with pam_tally2. For this reason pam_tally is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. pam_tally comes in two parts: pam_tally.so and pam_tally. The former is the PAM module and the latter, a stand-alone program. pam_tally is an (optional) application which can be used to interrogate and manipulate the counter file. It can display user counts, set individual counts, or clear all counts. Setting artificially high counts may be useful for blocking users without changing their passwords. For example, one might find it useful to clear all counts every midnight from a cron job. The faillog8 command can be used instead of pam_tally to to maintain the counter file. Normally, failed attempts to access root will not cause the root account to become blocked, to prevent denial-of-service: if your users aren't given shell accounts and root may only login via su or at the machine console (not telnet/rsh, etc), this is safe. GLOBAL OPTIONS This can be used for auth and account module types. onerr=[fail|succeed] If something weird happens (like unable to open the file), return with PAM_SUCCESS if onerr=succeed is given, else with the corresponding PAM error code. file=/path/to/counter File where to keep counts. Default is /var/log/faillog. audit Will log the user name into the system log if the user is not found. silent Don't print informative messages. The messages printed without the silent option leak presence of accounts on the system because they are not printed for non-existing accounts. no_log_info Don't log informative messages via syslog3. AUTH OPTIONS Authentication phase first checks if user should be denied access and if not it increments attempted login counter. Then on call to pam_setcred3 it resets the attempts counter. deny=n Deny access if tally for this user exceeds n. lock_time=n Always deny for n seconds after failed attempt. unlock_time=n Allow access after n seconds after failed attempt. If this option is used the user will be locked out for the specified amount of time after he exceeded his maximum allowed attempts. Otherwise the account is locked until the lock is removed by a manual intervention of the system administrator. magic_root If the module is invoked by a user with uid=0 the counter is not incremented. The sysadmin should use this for user launched services, like su, otherwise this argument should be omitted. no_lock_time Do not use the .fail_locktime field in /var/log/faillog for this user. no_reset Don't reset count on successful entry, only decrement. even_deny_root_account Root account can become unavailable. per_user If /var/log/faillog contains a non-zero .fail_max/.fail_locktime field for this user then use it instead of deny=n/ lock_time=n parameter. no_lock_time Don't use .fail_locktime filed in /var/log/faillog for this user. ACCOUNT OPTIONS Account phase resets attempts counter if the user is not magic root. This phase can be used optionally for services which don't call pam_setcred3 correctly or if the reset should be done regardless of the failure of the account phase of other modules. magic_root If the module is invoked by a user with uid=0 the counter is not incremented. The sysadmin should use this for user launched services, like su, otherwise this argument should be omitted. no_reset Don't reset count on successful entry, only decrement. The auth and account module types are provided. PAM_AUTH_ERR A invalid option was given, the module was not able to retrieve the user name, no valid counter file was found, or too many failed logins. PAM_SUCCESS Everything was successful. PAM_USER_UNKNOWN User not known. Add the following line to /etc/pam.d/login to lock the account after too many failed logins. The number of allowed fails is specified by /var/log/faillog and needs to be set with pam_tally or faillog8 before. auth required pam_securetty.so auth required pam_tally.so per_user auth required pam_env.so auth required pam_unix.so auth required pam_nologin.so account required pam_unix.so password required pam_unix.so session required pam_limits.so session required pam_unix.so session required pam_lastlog.so nowtmp session optional pam_mail.so standard /var/log/faillog failure logging file faillog8 , pam.conf5 , pam.d5 , pam8 pam_tally was written by Tim Baverstock and Tomas Mraz.