This appears to be a call from the FailedLogin() function in greeter/greet.c
to log the failed login:

    syslog(LOG_AUTHPRIV|LOG_NOTICE,
           "LOGIN FAILURE ON %s, %s",
           d->name, greet->name);

commit 58021c21c28fdb4949d44aa92e68874155842ccc tried to make sure that
greet->name was set to a valid string before calling that routine, but
it seems in your case to still be invalid.  FailedLogin() itself should
probably check for NULL for non-PAM authentication anyway, or for failure
of PAM to fill in the string:

diff --git a/greeter/greet.c b/greeter/greet.c
index 17d21c8..17d67b8 100644
--- a/greeter/greet.c
+++ b/greeter/greet.c
@@ -415,9 +415,14 @@ static void
 FailedLogin (struct display *d, struct greet_info *greet)
 {
 #ifdef USE_SYSLOG
+    char *username = greet->name;
+
+    if (username == NULL)
+       username = "username unavailable";
+
     syslog(LOG_AUTHPRIV|LOG_NOTICE,
           "LOGIN FAILURE ON %s, %s",
-          d->name, greet->name);
+          d->name, username);
 #endif
     DrawFail (login);
 #ifndef USE_PAM

Created attachment 30509 [details]
crash-on-patch1.txt

Sorry but that does not help on valid password. I will try wrong password next time as well. ;)

Oct 17 22:14:42 vrapenec xdm[13475]: pam_unix(xdm:auth): authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty=:0 ruser= rhost=  user=mmokrejs
Oct 17 22:14:44 vrapenec kernel: xdm[13475]: segfault at 1 ip b7bde258 sp bfd2684c error 4 in libc-2.10.1.so[b7b9e000+151000]



Login with valid local password results in

Oct 17 22:15:24 vrapenec xdm[13538]: pam_unix(xdm:session): session opened for user mmokrejs by mmokrejs(uid=0)

On Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 12:06:13PM -0700, bugzilla-daemon@freedesktop.org wrote:
> +    char *username = greet->name;
> +
> +    if (username == NULL)
> +       username = "username unavailable";

Won't this need to be a const char *, then?

Cheers,
Daniel

(In reply to comment #2)
> Created an attachment (id=30509) [details]
> crash-on-patch1.txt
> 
> Sorry but that does not help on valid password. I will try wrong password next
> time as well. ;)

xdm doesn't call syslog on valid password - if it's crashing in that case,
then that's probably not the right stack trace (after all, if your password
is valid, why is it syslog'ing "LOGIN FAILURE ON...") or your kerberos/PAM
stack is broken.

I don't have a kerberos environment set up - if you want to solve this, 
you'll probably need to find someone who does have kerberos and can debug.

(In reply to comment #3)
> On Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 12:06:13PM -0700, bugzilla-daemon@freedesktop.org
> wrote:
> > +    char *username = greet->name;
> > +
> > +    if (username == NULL)
> > +       username = "username unavailable";
> 
> Won't this need to be a const char *, then?

Yeah, it should be.   I've fixed that and pushed this patch, since even
if it doesn't solve this bug, it protects against similar problems.

(In reply to comment #4)
> (In reply to comment #2)
> > Created an attachment (id=30509) [details] [details]
> > crash-on-patch1.txt
> > 
> > Sorry but that does not help on valid password. I will try wrong password next
> > time as well. ;)
> 
> xdm doesn't call syslog on valid password - if it's crashing in that case,
> then that's probably not the right stack trace (after all, if your password
> is valid, why is it syslog'ing "LOGIN FAILURE ON...") or your kerberos/PAM
> stack is broken.
> 
> I don't have a kerberos environment set up - if you want to solve this, 
> you'll probably need to find someone who does have kerberos and can debug.
> 

Remember both passwords are tried (local and kerberos). The order is defined by /etc/pam.d/ files. If the first method fails, the other is tried.

Some startup where maybe some return values are listed ...
http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/pam-krb5/


Install kerberos locally, it is easy. Just go for http://www.h5l.org/, ./configure, install into /usr/heimdal (default), create a master password for the password database, start kdc, install the pam module.

(In reply to comment #6)
> Install kerberos locally, it is easy. Just go for http://www.h5l.org/,

Thanks, but the OS I use already has kerberos support built in.
I still don't have time to configure a server & client right now,
so will leave this for someone else who does to debug.

On my Linux box xdm-1.1.9 crashes on _session exit_ , but with ( almost ) the same call stack so I assume there is some relation ...

I could not totally follow the events yet, but it seems that the culprit
is  the call to `openlog' in the greeter library:
The ident-string is a constant stored in the greeter library and the
reference is passed to the logger, who stores it for later use.
However, the greeter lib is unloaded shortly afterwards and the
pointer turns invalid.

The next call to a syslog ( after unloading the greeter lib ) then
seems only to happen from
      ManageSession->SessionExit->pam_close_session
and I constantly get a segfault with no xdm left.

In the glibc manual page for openlog(3) I found:

>     Please note that the string pointer IDENT will be retained
>     internally by the Syslog routines.  You must not free the memory
>     that IDENT points to.  It is also dangerous to pass a reference to
>     an automatic variable since leaving the scope would mean ending the
>     lifetime of the variable.  If you want to change the IDENT string,
>     you must call `openlog' again; overwriting the string pointed to by
>     IDENT is not thread-safe.
>
>      ...
>
> !!  In particular, if you are writing code for a shared library that
> !!  might get loaded and then unloaded (e.g. a PAM module), and you
> !!  use `openlog', you must call `closelog' before any point where
> !!  your library might get unloaded, as in this example:


Indeed all works fine after I moved the call to `openlog' from the
greeter lib to the main xdm part.

maybe this helps ?

horst wente


Configuration:
- Linux 2.6.27
- xdm 1.1.9
- Linux-PAM 1.1.1
- glibc 2.10.1
- gcc 4.4.2

(In reply to comment #8)
> On my Linux box xdm-1.1.9 crashes on _session exit_ , but with ( almost ) the
> same call stack so I assume there is some relation ...
> 
> I could not totally follow the events yet, but it seems that the culprit
> is  the call to `openlog' in the greeter library:
> The ident-string is a constant stored in the greeter library and the
> reference is passed to the logger, who stores it for later use.
> However, the greeter lib is unloaded shortly afterwards and the
> pointer turns invalid.
> 
this one should be fixed by:

commit ecf015a4e78b96af913c1620d542c8e356f2a3d0
Author: Dmitry V. Levin <ldv@altlinux.org>
Date:   Mon Jan 11 23:09:47 2010 +0000

    Call openlog(3) early

Do you still get this crash with xdm 1.1.10?

No, it seems to be fixed with 1.1.10. It seems I have some PAM issue, though as I cannot login using kerberos password.


Just as a note, maybe not always is the to be logged text flushed into the syslog? Below is the log generated for 3 attempts to login using kerberos password:

Apr 11 23:46:53 vrapenec xdm[8284]: pam_unix(xdm:auth): authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty=:0 ruser= rhost=  user=mmokrejs
Apr 11 23:46:55 vrapenec xdm[8284]: LOGIN FAILURE ON :0, mmokrejs
Apr 11 23:47:16 vrapenec xdm[8284]: pam_unix(xdm:auth): authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty=:0 ruser= rhost=  user=mmokrejs
Apr 11 23:47:18 vrapenec xdm[8284]: LOGIN FAILURE ON :0, 
Apr 11 23:48:40 vrapenec xdm[8284]: pam_unix(xdm:auth): authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty=:0 ruser= rhost=  user=mmokrejs
Apr 11 23:48:41 vrapenec xdm[8284]: LOGIN FAILURE ON :0, <B8>^CL<B7>