On my Debian/Sarge machine I would like to authenticate users with LDAP. There are numerous howtos written for Debian that cover this[1]. It works except for SSH2 (from ssh.com). Local console logins can authenticate to the LDAP server via PAM. Remote SSH users can authenticate to local accounts (/etc/passwd accounts) through PAM. When remote SSH users attempt to authenticate to LDAP the session authenticates, but then hangs. $ ssh foo@10.0.8.10 Keyboard-interactive: PAM authentication Password: Authentication successful. <hang indefinitely> One thing worth noting is that the 'files ldap' order in nsswitch.conf matters. If 'ldap files' is used for passwd/group/shadow then all SSH sessions (local and ldap users) hang after authentication. Interesting config files are below. There are pages and pages of logs from slapd and ssh. Any help would be greatly appreciated. /etc/pam.d/sshd2 ---------------- account sufficient pam_ldap.so account required pam_unix.so auth sufficient pam_ldap.so auth required pam_unix.so use_first_pass password sufficient pam_ldap.so password required pam_unix.so nullok obscure min=4 max=8 md5 session sufficient pam_ldap.so session required pam_unix.so /etc/pam_ldap.conf ------------------ host 127.0.0.1 base dc=example,dc=net ldap_version 3 rootbinddn cn=admin,dc=example,dc=net pam_password exop /etc/nsswitch.conf ------------------ passwd: files ldap group: files ldap shadow: files ldap # the rest of nsswitch.conf is stock dummy ldap user --------------- dn: cn=foo,ou=users,dc=example,dc=net cn: foo objectClass: posixAccount objectClass: shadowAccount objectClass: inetOrgPerson sn: User uid: foo uidNumber: 9001 gidNumber: 9000 homeDirectory: /tmp userPassword:: e2NyeXB0fSQxJDFsOXdEYW1aJGZyejNjWnJGcUY5RUViUlVuU1JGTS8= shadowLastChange: 13053 /etc/ldap/slapd.conf -------------------- mostly stock with write access granted to * for debugging. distro: Debian/Sarge ssh: ssh2 v3.2.9.1 from ssh.com kernel: debian 2.6.8-2-686 all other tools from Debian/Sarge [1] http://enterprise.linux.com/article.pl?sid=05/09/15/1930256 http://usefulinc.com/edd/blog/contents/2005/09/25-ldap/read the latter seems to use tools from Sid.