the pam document could do with a picture showing the layers of authentication ... i think this would help nicely with the explanation of PAM and the different components so you'd have like: [ application (gdm/Dovecot/etc...) asks for file in /etc/pam.d/ ] [ libpam (sys-libs/pam) parses the config file(s) and runs modules as needed ] [ pam_unix.so ] [ pam_mysql ] [ pam_ldap ] [ ... etc ... ] [ /etc/passwd ] [ <mysql db> ] [ <ldap serv> ]
Nothin' to do with us...
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/PAM/en doesn't have a picture, but that can be brought up on the talk page.