Where to start with linux authentication? Recently I was asked about where someone could learn how linux authentication works as a "big picture" and how all the parts communicate. There aren't too many great resources on this sadly, so I've decided to write this up. Who ... are you? The first component in linux identity is NSS or nsswitch (not to be confused with NSS the cryptography library ... ). nsswitch (name service switch) is exposed by glibc as a method to resolve uid/gid numbers and n...
