EMSRV for Linux implements authentication using PAM. This allows both shadowed and non-shadowed passwords to be supported with one EMSRV executable. In addition, Red Hat Linux supports MD5 passwords and EMSRV also supports these via PAM.

PAM must be correctly configured on a machine running EMSRV otherwise it will not even be possible to shutdown EMSRV using EMADMIN. The PAM configuration file must be copied to /etc/pam.d/emsrv. A sample PAM configuration file is included in /usr/local/VASTPlatform/13.0.1-64bit/samples/PAM.