Frequently Asked Questions

What platforms does pGina support? - Version 3.0 supports x86 and x64 versions of windows starting with Windows XP SP3 and continuing to the latest available version (Windows 8 Developer Preview as of this writing).

Why a ground up re-write for 3.x? - The previous versions of pGina imposed some artificial limitations, suffered from an extended period of relative bit-rot, and were generally built upon an initial proof-of-concept codebase that highly reflected the early stages of an ongoing education in software development. Having the last 10 years of experience to draw on, the development team decided to re-imagine what pGina could do and how it could do it. As part of this, nothing was off the table, including a complete re-write. While the decision to undertake a re-write was not taken lightly (we generally disagree with this approach, as prevalent as it seems to be in software development these days), it became clear that this was our best bet to providing a truly exceptional version of pGina. A ground-up re-write allowed us to also completely re-work how pGina functions at a fundamental level. The following detail some of the things we have accomplished as a result.

GINA vs CredentialProvider: While 1.x and 2.x diverged in their supported platforms as a result of being tightly tied to their core implementation (1.x as a GINA and 2.x as a CredentialProvider), we decided that this was a 'leaky abstraction' that users should not care about. GINA, CredentialProvider, WidgetOfTheMonth, who cares? Users just want to download the most current version, install it, and use it. 3.x includes both a GINA and a CredentialProvider. The correct one for the system in use is automatically used.

x86 vs x64: Similar to the supported platform issue, the original codebase pre-dates the availability of managed languages, x64 platforms, and other concepts that are considered standard today. 3.0 is implemented primarily in managed code (C#) which is built as a platform agnostic binary, allowing it to take advantage of and work in both x64 and x86 environments. Any non-agnostic binaries are included in both x86 and x64 flavors, and the correct one is used accordingly. Again, users should not care! They just download and install!

Plugin API: The previous plugin API was severly limited. Most features were implemented in the core pGina codebase itself. Only a single plugin could be loaded at a time, plugins had to be built in C/C++ and compiled as the same architecture as pGina and the Windows platform in use. These were normal constraints in 2000, but are no longer acceptable. 3.0 provides a straightforward and extendable API as a managed interface in C#. Additional support assemblies are provided to make common plugin tasks (logging, environment examination, information sharing) straightforward. Any number of plugins can be loaded, can be platform agnostic, and are configurable from a single consolidated UI. We firmly believe that the 3.0 approach provides the best developer AND user plugin experience possible. In fact, large portions of what used to be pGina core code features (local user account management) are themselves now implemented as plugins!

What plugins are included with pGina? - As of this writing, the available plugins out-of-box are LDAP Authentication, MySQL Authentication, MySQL Logging, Single User, Local Machine (SAM), Session Limit. We expect to add more as they become available or are provided by the community.

Can I authenticate my users with ...? - Yes! Or at least, most likely! pGina's out-of-box plugins may or may not support your technology of choice. However, most single-factor authentication backends can be supported pretty easily. pGina's architecture is extremely flexible, and is plugin driven - so in all likelihood, a plugin could be created for your backend of choice. If your backend isn't supported by an out-of-box plugin you're best bet is to create your own plugin (or have someone do so for you). Plugins are written in managed code (generally C#) and are fairly trivial to create (aside from the backend specific logic you must implement). See our documentation and email the developer mailing list for more information. Of course, if you implement a plugin that may be useful to others, we'd love to host it on the pGina site or even include it in future installer revisions!

Do shared services and devices authenticate users via pGina? - No. pGina is intended as a replacement for the *interactive* login process. Access to network shared items like printers, drives/folders, etc on another machine - do not use the portion of the OS that pGina provides replacements for. That said, the 3.x architecture does allow for this kind of thing in the future, by moving much (arguably all) actual processing into a dedicated service, *any* part of the OS which can be augmented, could potentially validate credentials using the pGina framework. For things like shared services, this would require an LSA module. This is outside the scope of the pGina project, but we've tried to make it flexible enough that experimentation in this area could be done!