pamunix

Pamunix is a hypothetical Unix-like operating system designed to illustrate how Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) can be integrated across a range of services. In educational and theoretical contexts, pamunix serves as a model for policy-driven authentication and modular security, rather than as a released product.

The design envisions a dedicated authentication manager that mediates login and session requests to a pluggable PAM stack. PAM modules can be written to interface with local accounts, network identity services, and external factors such as hardware tokens, enabling flexible authentication policies without changing individual services.

The PAM stack supports modules for authentication, account management, session management, and password handling, and can draw from multiple backends such as local shadow files, LDAP directories, and Kerberos realms.

In practice, pamunix is not a released operating system; it remains a conceptual framework used in textbooks and research to illustrate PAM configuration, service independence, and policy-driven security.

Related topics include Pluggable Authentication Modules, Unix-like operating systems, and centralized authentication architectures.