how can you use pam-dbus without using gnome

Question

I have been playing around with pam-dbus on a old slow box that is too slow for gnome/kde so I have been using ratpoision as the window manager. I was able to configure it to show a notification on the desktop whenever an authentication attempt was made, but I can't figure out how to approve/disapprove the attempt.

Answer 1

pam-dbus uses a feature where a notification contains not only text, but can also allows for Yes-No-interaction. Not all providers of notifications support that feature, if yours does not then you cannot use pam-dbus.

You can check that your notification daemon supports action using this script:

#!/usr/bin/python
import pynotify
pynotify.init("pam-dbus-test")
n = pynotify.Notification("Title","Text")
n.add_action("action", "An action", lambda _: False)
n.show()