Pam updates break system (Was: pam changes require dovecot restart)

[n0dalus]

On 12/17/05, Tomas Mraz <tmraz at redhat.com> wrote:
>
> Actually all long running services using PAM have to be restarted after
> this upgrade as the new modules won't work with the old library which is
> already loaded into the process.
>

A pam update just rendered my entire test system unusable. I couldn't
login, I couldn't get out of gnome-screensaver's lock, I couldn't ssh
in, and I couldn't start up the computer in runlevel 3 or 5 any more.
In the end I managed to resolve it by booting into runlevel 1, going
into /var/cache/yum/development/packages and manually running: rpm
-Uvh pam*.rpm
It appears as though yum only partially updated pam, removing
/lib/libpam.so.0.80 but something went seriously wrong before it was
able to install the new libpam.so.

I hope that anyone else that has this problem can use this information
to repair their system.

n0dalus.