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Installation Note 48552: When authenticating on AIX using a blank password, sasauth becomes unresponsive

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If you use the UNIX SAS® authentication server sasauth on AIX to authenticate users using a blank or empty password, the server might become unresponsive.

Explanatory messages should be, but are not, written to the sasauth-debug.log file.

Select the Hot Fix tab in this Note to access the hot fix for this problem.

With the hot fix applied, the following enhanced behavior occurs:

  • The SASFoundation/9.3/utilities/bin/sasauth.conf file includes a new option that enables rejection of zero-length passwords.
  • If logging is enabled, explanatory messages are written to the log.
  • Passwords from external stores (LDAP, AD) are rejected if expired.

NOTE: The hot fix replaces the file <SASHOME>SASFoundation/9.3/utilties/bin/sasauth.conf, so any changes that you have made to this file (changes to the METHODS= parameter, or to logging parameters) will be lost.
For this reason, you must create a backup of the file before you apply the hot fix.
Once the hot fix is applied, edit the new version of the sasauth.conf file to restore any previous customizations.

Do not overwrite the new version of the sasauth.conf file with the previous version.
The hot fix adds new option settings to the sasauth.conf file. These options are needed to exploit the additional features of the replacement sasauth module.



Operating System and Release Information

Product FamilyProductSystemProduct ReleaseSAS Release
ReportedFixed*ReportedFixed*
SAS SystemBase SAS64-bit Enabled AIX9.21_M39.49.2 TS2M39.4 TS1M0
* For software releases that are not yet generally available, the Fixed Release is the software release in which the problem is planned to be fixed.