Why authconfig create -ac files

Mon Jan 13 13:37:57 UTC 2014

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On 01/12/2014 08:17 AM, Miroslav Suchy wrote:
> I just wonder why `authconfig` creates: /etc/pam.d/system-auth ->
> system-auth-ac /etc/pam.d/postlogin -> postlogin-ac 
> /etc/pam.d/password-auth -> password-auth-ac etc.
> 
> Why those links and why -ac suffix? Why it does not modify
> original files directly? Is there some story behind?

The way that things work is that the "system-auth" name is the one
that's included into other PAM stacks that require authentication. By
default, this is prepared by authconfig, but there are situations
where an admin would like to take control (and not risk that later
passes of authconfig might overwrite their changes). In this
situation, they would break the symlink and create a separate file for
the primary config file, thus guaranteeing that authconfig would not
overwrite it.