PAM-PANEL-ICON(1)

📦 version 1.114, in centos-stream 9, debian bookworm, debian trixie, fedora 43, fedora 44, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

💖 PAM-PANEL-ICON(1) 💖

okay bestie, so this is a page from the General Commands Manual, and honestly? it's giving "tiny icon, big responsibilities". let's get into it 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

pam-panel-icon — a notification area indicator of pam_timestamp status 👑✨

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

pam-panel-icon

that's it. no flags, no args, no drama. it just runs. 💅

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so, pam-panel-icon should be automatically started when your X11 desktop environment starts up. no cap. for example, in GNOME, gnome-session should be configured to start pam-panel-icon. and on a properly configured system? you should never have to start pam-panel-icon by hand. it's not that kind of main character — it gets launched for you. 😌

pam-panel-icon uses pam_timestamp_check(8) to watch the pam_timestamp timestamp status. lowkey obsessed with watching that thing. 👀

so if the pam_timestamp authorization is active — meaning an unprivileged user is allowed to temporarily authenticate as the root user without providing a password — then an icon shows up in the notification area of the panel. ✨ and here's the slay part: that icon lets you drop the authorization immediately. instant. periodt. 💅

💀 EXIT STATUS 💀

ordinarily, pam-panel-icon just keeps running until the X11 desktop session ends, and then it returns 0. so chill. 🧘

it only returns with a non-zero status on unexpected error. that's the only time you should be worried, fr fr. 😭

🎀 FILES 🎀

  • /sbin/pam_timestamp_check — a hard-coded location of the pam_timestamp_check executable. like, it's not out here searching for it, bestie, it knows exactly where it lives. 📍

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

💖 shoutout to Red Hat, who brought this lil icon into the world on 2009-10-05. iykyk. go forth and let your panel icon do its thing, bestie 🌸🦋✨
📦 where this page comes from