/etc/securetty missing: dovecot not working

Bug #1872443 reported by Dr. Uwe Meyer-Gruhl
82
This bug affects 19 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
shadow (Ubuntu)
Confirmed
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

With Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa, /etc/securetty is missing from the "login" package (4.8.1-1ubuntu4).

This leads to errors such as in /var/log/mail.log when a dovecot auth is tried:

Apr 13 13:08:17 venus dovecot[10588]: imap-login: Login: user=<tttt>, method=PLAIN,
rip=192.168.123.1, lip=192.168.123.188, mpid=12200, TLS, TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-E
CDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)
Apr 13 13:08:18 venus auth[12195]: pam_unix(dovecot:auth): Couldn't open /etc/secure
tty: No such file or directory
Apr 13 13:08:18 venus auth[12195]: pam_unix(dovecot:auth): Couldn't open /etc/secure
tty: No such file or directory
Apr 13 13:08:18 venus dovecot[10588]: imap-login: Login: user=<tttt>, method=PLAIN,
rip=192.168.123.1, lip=192.168.123.188, mpid=12202, TLS, TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-E
CDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)

It seems that pam_unix still needs /etc/securetty, but login no longer provides it.

There was a similar bug in debian that seems to be related:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=931899

To my understanding, this is a problem between pam and login packages in 20.04.

Revision history for this message
Dr. Uwe Meyer-Gruhl (meyergru) wrote :

At least, in 18.04, the file /etc/securetty was in package login...

Revision history for this message
Serge Hallyn (serge-hallyn) wrote :

This was a decision made by the debian package (see https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=771675 ).

Would you mind raising a bug against pam and shadow in debian bringing this up? Perhaps the libpam-modules package should supply it alongside the pam_securetty.so.

Please let us know if you're not comfortable doing that.

Revision history for this message
Dr. Uwe Meyer-Gruhl (meyergru) wrote :

I cannot tell if this is a problem in whatever version of Debian, since I do not use it.

Even with Ubuntu being derived from Debian at some point between 18.04 where /etc/securetty was delivered with package login and 20.04 where the whole package is unavailable.

I think that is an interdependence between multiple packages, but I am not quite in the position to point at where (or even if) the problem could be fixed in Debian.

Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Changed in shadow (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
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