pam_timestamp — Authenticate using cached successful authentication attempts ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ DESCRIPTION In a nutshell, pam_timestamp caches successful authentication attempts, and allows you to use a recent successful attempt as the basis for authentication. This is similar mechanism which is used in sudo. When an application opens a session using pam_timestamp, a timestamp file is created in the timestampdir directory for the user. When an application attempts to authenticate the user, a pam_timestamp will treat a sufficiently recent timestamp file as grounds for succeeding. The default encryption hash is taken from the HMAC_CRYPTO_ALGO variable from / etc/login.defs. OPTIONS timestampdir=directory Specify an alternate directory where pam_timestamp creates timestamp files. timestamp_timeout=number How long should pam_timestamp treat timestamp as valid after their last modification date (in seconds). Default is 300 seconds. verbose Attempt to inform the user when access is granted. debug Turns on debugging messages sent to syslog(3). NOTES Users can get confused when they are not always asked for passwords when running a given program. Some users reflexively begin typing information before noticing that it is not being asked for. EXAMPLES auth sufficient pam_timestamp.so verbose auth required pam_unix.so session required pam_unix.so session optional pam_timestamp.so AUTHOR pam_timestamp was written by Nalin Dahyabhai.