Pam Errors when setting up a class network

General

When setting up classnet networks, private IPs are used. In this scenario, the nameserver is not reachable and hostname/ip mappings are added to the /etc/hosts file.

This is something you might be tempted to setup at the end, with the idea you can use explicit IPs in the meantime. This will not work if you're trying to telnet/rlogin/ssh between machines using the IPs without a nameserver.

The errors show up as "pam authenticate: Conversation Error" on the destination machine when you do, for example, rlogin 192.168.5.25. Even though you've specified the IP the destination machine will still try to query the nameserver as part of the connection setup.

Error Behavior

On a new machine on a private network, rlogin/ssh/telnet to a machine will take about 5 minutes (but will succeed eventually) and the destination machine will echo several "pam authenticate: conversation error" messages to the console.

To Fix

Add hostname/ip mapping for BOTH the destination and src machines to the /etc/hosts files on each machine.


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Author: [Angie Van Osdol]