faillock.conf(5) — Linux manual page

NAME | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | EXAMPLES | FILES | SEE ALSO | AUTHOR | COLOPHON

FAILLOCK.CONF(5)            Linux-PAM Manual            FAILLOCK.CONF(5)

NAME         top

       faillock.conf - pam_faillock configuration file

DESCRIPTION         top

       faillock.conf provides a way to configure the default settings
       for locking the user after multiple failed authentication
       attempts. This file is read by the pam_faillock module and is the
       preferred method over configuring pam_faillock directly.

       The file has a very simple name = value format with possible
       comments starting with # character. The whitespace at the
       beginning of line, end of line, and around the = sign is ignored.

OPTIONS         top

       dir=/path/to/tally-directory
           The directory where the user files with the failure records
           are kept. The default is /var/run/faillock.

           Note: These files will disappear after reboot on systems
           configured with directory /var/run/faillock mounted on
           virtual memory.

       audit
           Will log the user name into the system log if the user is not
           found.

       silent
           Don't print informative messages to the user. Please note
           that when this option is not used there will be difference in
           the authentication behavior for users which exist on the
           system and non-existing users.

       no_log_info
           Don't log informative messages via syslog(3).

       local_users_only
           Only track failed user authentications attempts for local
           users in /etc/passwd and ignore centralized (AD, IdM, LDAP,
           etc.) users. The faillock(8) command will also no longer
           track user failed authentication attempts. Enabling this
           option will prevent a double-lockout scenario where a user is
           locked out locally and in the centralized mechanism.

       nodelay
           Don't enforce a delay after authentication failures.

       deny=n
           Deny access if the number of consecutive authentication
           failures for this user during the recent interval exceeds n.
           The default is 3.

       fail_interval=n
           The length of the interval during which the consecutive
           authentication failures must happen for the user account lock
           out is n seconds. The default is 900 (15 minutes).

       unlock_time=n
           The access will be re-enabled after n seconds after the lock
           out. The value 0 has the same meaning as value never - the
           access will not be re-enabled without resetting the faillock
           entries by the faillock(8) command. The default is 600 (10
           minutes).

           Note that the default directory that pam_faillock uses is
           usually cleared on system boot so the access will be also
           re-enabled after system reboot. If that is undesirable a
           different tally directory must be set with the dir option.

           Also note that it is usually undesirable to permanently lock
           out users as they can become easily a target of denial of
           service attack unless the usernames are random and kept
           secret to potential attackers.

       even_deny_root
           Root account can become locked as well as regular accounts.

       root_unlock_time=n
           This option implies even_deny_root option. Allow access after
           n seconds to root account after the account is locked. In
           case the option is not specified the value is the same as of
           the unlock_time option.

       admin_group=name
           If a group name is specified with this option, members of the
           group will be handled by this module the same as the root
           account (the options even_deny_root and root_unlock_time will
           apply to them. By default the option is not set.

EXAMPLES         top

       /etc/security/faillock.conf file example:

           deny=4
           unlock_time=1200
           silent

FILES         top

       /etc/security/faillock.conf
           the config file for custom options

SEE ALSO         top

       faillock(8), pam_faillock(8), pam.conf(5), pam.d(5), pam(8)

AUTHOR         top

       pam_faillock was written by Tomas Mraz. The support for
       faillock.conf was written by Brian Ward.

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the linux-pam (Pluggable Authentication
       Modules for Linux) project.  Information about the project can be
       found at ⟨http://www.linux-pam.org/⟩.  If you have a bug report
       for this manual page, see ⟨//www.linux-pam.org/⟩.  This page was
       obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/linux-pam/linux-pam.git⟩ on 2023-12-22.  (At
       that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in
       the repository was 2023-12-18.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

Linux-PAM Manual               12/22/2023               FAILLOCK.CONF(5)

Pages that refer to this page: pam_faillock(8)