#1055283 sasl2-bin: saslauthd in postfix chroot mode exits after several PAM authentication failures

Package:
sasl2-bin
Source:
sasl2-bin
Description:
Cyrus SASL - administration programs for SASL users database
Submitter:
John Lines
Date:
2023-11-03 14:12:04 UTC
Severity:
normal
#1055283#5
Date:
2023-11-03 14:08:40 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Maintainer,

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Running saslauthd for postfix authentication, with postfix in a chroot,
using PAM as an authentication methods, causes saslauthd to exit, with
a message

Nov 03 13:00:59 agc saslauthd[808674]:                 : master exited: 617183

This appears to be a clean exit, rather than a crash, but was preceded
by several hundred messages of

Nov 03 13:00:44 agc saslauthd[617185]: pam_unix(smtp:auth): check pass; user unknown
Nov 03 13:00:44 agc saslauthd[617185]: pam_unix(smtp:auth): authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty= ruser= rhost=
Nov 03 13:00:46 agc saslauthd[617185]: DEBUG: auth_pam: pam_authenticate failed: Authentication failure
Nov 03 13:00:46 agc saslauthd[617185]:                 : auth failure: [user=nayan] [service=smtp] [realm=org.uk] [mech=pam] [reason=PAM auth error]
Nov 03 13:00:48 agc saslauthd[617188]: pam_unix(smtp:auth): check pass; user unknown
Nov 03 13:00:48 agc saslauthd[617188]: pam_unix(smtp:auth): authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty= ruser= rhost=
Nov 03 13:00:50 agc saslauthd[617188]: DEBUG: auth_pam: pam_authenticate failed: Authentication failure
Nov 03 13:00:50 agc saslauthd[617188]:                 : auth failure: [user=copier] [service=smtp] [realm=ambridge-garden-club.org.uk] [mech=pam] [reason=PAM auth error]
Nov 03 13:00:52 agc saslauthd[617187]: pam_unix(smtp:auth): check pass; user unknown
Nov 03 13:00:52 agc saslauthd[617187]: pam_unix(smtp:auth): authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty= ruser= rhost=
Nov 03 13:00:55 agc saslauthd[617187]: DEBUG: auth_pam: pam_authenticate failed: Authentication failure
Nov 03 13:00:55 agc saslauthd[617187]:                 : auth failure: [user=beans] [service=smtp] [realm=org.uk] [mech=pam] [reason=PAM auth error]

A more imformative exit reason would help investigate the problem, also
the daemon should not exit simply because it has had a number of PAM
authentication failures.

Restarting the daemon restores normal operation, thus is a work-around,
but not ideal.