illumos: manual page: acl.7

ACL(7) Standards, Environments, and Macros ACL(7)

NAME

acl - Access Control Lists

DESCRIPTION

Access control lists (ACLs) are discretionary access control mechanisms
that grant and deny access to files and directories. Two different ACL
models are supported in this release: POSIX-draft ACLs and NFSv4 ACLs.

The older, POSIX-draft model is supported by the UFS file system. This
model is based on a withdrawn ACL POSIX specification that was never
standardized. It was subsequently withdrawn by the POSIX committee.

The other model is based on the standards of the NFSv4 working group and
is an approved standard from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).
The ZFS file system uses the NFSv4 model, and provides richer semantics
and finer grained permission capabilities than the POSIX-draft model.

POSIX-draft ACLs
POSIX-draft ACLs provide an alternative security mechanism to basic UNIX
file permissions. Their purpose is to further restrict access to files
and directories or to extend permissions to a particular user. ACLs can
be used to change the permissions for the standard owner, group and other
class bits of a file's mode. ACLs can give additional users and groups
access to the file. A directory can also have a special kind of ACL
called a default ACL, which defines ACL entries to be inherited by
descendents of the directory. POSIX-draft ACLs have an ACL entry called
mask. The mask defines the maximum permissions that can be granted to
additional user and group entries. Whenever a file is created or its mode
is changed by chmod(1) or chmod(2), the mask is recomputed. It is
recomputed to be the group permission defined in the mode passed to
chmod(2).

The POSIX-draft ACL model uses the standard rwx model of traditional UNIX
permissions.

An ACL is represented as follows:

acl_entry[,acl_entry]...

Each acl_entry contains one ACL entry. An ACL entry is represented by two
or three colon-separated(:) fields.

user:[uid]:perms
If uid blank, it represents the file owner.

group:[gid]:perms
If gid is blank, it represents the owning group.

other:perms
Represents the file other class.

mask:perms
Defines the MAX permission to hand out.

For example to give user joe read and write permissions, the ACL entry is
specified as:

user:joe:rw-

NFSv4 ACLs
The NFSv4 ACL model is based loosely on the Windows NT ACL model. NFSv4
ACLs provide a much richer ACL model than POSIX-draft ACLs.

The major differences between NFSv4 and POSIX-draft ACLs are as follows:

o NFSv4 ACLs provide finer grained permissions than the rwx
model.

o NFSv4 ACLs allow for both ALLOW and DENY entries.

o NFSv4 ACLs provide a rich set of inheritance semantics. POSIX
ACLs also have inheritance, but with the NFSv4 model you can
control the following inheritance features:

o Whether inheritance cascades to both files and directories
or only to files or directories.

o In the case of directories, you can indicate whether
inheritance is applied to the directory itself, to just
one level of subdirectories, or cascades to all
subdirectories of the directory.

o NFSv4 ACLs provide a mechanism for hooking into a system's
audit trail. Currently, illumos does not support this
mechanism.

o NFSv4 ACLs enable administrators to specify the order in which
ACL entries are checked. With POSIX-draft ACLs the file system
reorders ACL entries into a well defined, strict access,
checking order.

POSIX-draft ACL semantics can be achieved with NFSv4 ACLs. However, only
some NFSv4 ACLs can be translated to equivalent POSIX-draft ACLs.

Permissions can be specified in three different chmod ACL formats:
verbose, compact, or positional. The verbose format uses words to
indicate that the permissions are separated with a forward slash (/)
character. Compact format uses the permission letters and positional
format uses the permission letters or the hyphen (-) to identify no
permissions.

The permissions for verbose mode and their abbreviated form in
parentheses for compact and positional mode are described as follows:

read_data (r)
Permission to read the data of the file

list_directory (r)
Permission to list the contents of a directory.

write_data (w)
Permission to modify a file's data anywhere in
the file's offset range. This includes the
ability to grow the file or write to any
arbitrary offset.

add_file (w)
Permission to add a new file to a directory.

append_data (p)
The ability to modify the file's data, but only
starting at EOF. Currently, this permission is
not supported.

add_subdirectory (p)
Permission to create a subdirectory to a
directory.

read_xattr (R)
The ability to read the extended attributes of a
file or do a lookup in the extended attributes
directory.

write_xattr (W)
The ability to create extended attributes or
write to the extended attributes directory.

execute (x)
Permission to execute a file.

read_attributes (a)
The ability to read basic attributes (non-ACLs)
of a file. Basic attributes are considered to be
the stat level attributes. Allowing this access
mask bit means that the entity can execute ls(1)
and stat(2).

write_attributes (A)
Permission to change the times associated with a
file or directory to an arbitrary value.

delete (d)
Permission to delete the file.

delete_child (D)
Permission to delete a file within a directory.

read_acl (c)
Permission to read the ACL.

write_acl (C)
Permission to write the ACL or the ability to
execute chmod(1) or setfacl(1).

write_owner (o)
Permission to change the owner or the ability to
execute chown(1) or chgrp(1).

synchronize (s)
Permission to access a file locally at the server
with synchronous reads and writes. Currently,
this permission is not supported.

The following inheritance flags are supported by NFSv4 ACLs:

file_inherit (f)
Inherit to all newly created files in a
directory.

dir_inherit (d)
Inherit to all newly created directories in a
directory.

inherit_only (i)
Placed on a directory, but does not apply to
the directory itself, only to newly created
files and directories. This flag requires
file_inherit and/or dir_inherit to indicate
what to inherit.

no_propagate (n)
Placed on directories and indicates that ACL
entries should only be inherited one level of
the tree. This flag requires file_inherit
and/or dir_inherit to indicate what to inherit.

successful_access (S)
Indicates whether an alarm or audit record
should be initiated upon successful accesses.
Used with audit/alarm ACE types.

failed_access (F)
Indicates whether an alarm or audit record
should be initiated when access fails. Used
with audit/alarm ACE types.

inherited (I)
ACE was inherited.

-
No permission granted.

An NFSv4 ACL is expressed using the following syntax:

acl_entry[,acl_entry]...

owner@:<perms>[:inheritance flags]:<allow|deny>
group@:<perms>[:inheritance flags]:<allow|deny>
everyone@:<perms>[:inheritance flags]:<allow|deny>
user:<username>:<perms>[:inheritance flags]:<allow|deny>
usersid:<sid string>:<perms>[:inheritance flags]:<allow|deny>
group:<groupname>:<perms>[:inheritance flags]:<allow|deny>
groupsid:<sid string>:<perms>[:inheritance flags]:<allow|deny>
sid:<sid string>:<perms>[:inheritance flags]:<allow|deny>

owner@
File owner

group@
Group owner

user
Permissions for a specific user

group
Permissions for a specific group

Permission and inheritance flags are separated by a / character.

ACL specification examples:

user:fred:read_data/write_data/read_attributes:file_inherit:allow
owner@:read_data:allow,group@:read_data:allow,user:tom:read_data:deny

Using the compact ACL format, permissions are specified by using 14
unique letters to indicate permissions.

Using the positional ACL format, permissions are specified as positional
arguments similar to the ls -V format. The hyphen (-), which indicates
that no permission is granted at that position, can be omitted and only
the required letters have to be specified.

The letters above are listed in the order they would be specified in
positional notation.

With these letters you can specify permissions in the following
equivalent ways.

user:fred:rw------R------:file_inherit:allow

Or you can remove the - and scrunch it together.

user:fred:rwR:file_inherit:allow

The inheritance flags can also be specified in a more compact manner, as
follows:

user:fred:rwR:f:allow
user:fred:rwR:f------:allow

Shell-level API
Several utilities support the manipulation of ACLs. The following
utilities accommodate both ACL models:

chmod
The chmod utility has been enhanced to allow for the setting
and deleting of ACLs. This is achieved by extending the
symbolic-mode argument to support ACL manipulation. See
chmod(1) for details.

compress
When a file is compressed any ACL associated with the
original file is preserved with the compressed file.

cp
By default, cp ignores ACLs, unless the -p option is
specified. When -p is specified the owner and group id,
permission modes, modification and access times, ACLs, and
extended attributes if applicable are preserved.

cpio
ACLs are preserved when the -P option is specified.

find
Find locates files with ACLs when the -acl flag is specified.

ls
By default ls does not display ACL information. When the -v
option is specified, a file's ACL is displayed.

mv
When a file is moved, all attributes are carried along with
the renamed file. When a file is moved across a file system
boundary, the ACLs are replicated. If the ACL information
cannot be replicated, the move fails and the source file is
not removed.

pack
When a file is packed, any ACL associated with the original
file is preserved with the packed file.

rcp
rcp has been enhanced to support copying. A file's ACL is
only preserved when the remote host supports ACLs.

tar
ACLs are preserved when the -p option is specified.

unpack
When a file with an ACL is unpacked, the unpacked file
retains the ACL information.

Application-level API
The primary interfaces required to access file system ACLs at the
programmatic level are the acl_get() and acl_set() functions. These
functions support both POSIX-draft ACLs and NFSv4 ACLs.

Retrieving a file's ACL
int acl_get(const char *path, int flag, acl_t **aclp);
int facl_get(int fd, int flag, acl_t **aclp);

The acl_get(3SEC) and facl_get(3SEC) functions retrieve an ACL on a file
whose name is given by path or referenced by the open file descriptor fd.
The flag argument specifies whether a trivial ACL should be retrieved.
When the flag argument equals ACL_NO_TRIVIAL only ACLs that are not
trivial are retrieved. The ACL is returned in the aclp argument.

Freeing ACL structure

void acl_free(acl_t *aclp);

The acl_free() function frees up memory allocated for the argument aclp.

Setting an ACL on a file

int acl_set(const char *path, acl_t *aclp);
int facl_set(int fd, acl_t *aclp);

The acl_set(3SEC) and facl_get(3SEC) functions are used for setting an
ACL on a file whose name is given by path or referenced by the open file
descriptor fd. The aclp argument specifies the ACL to set. The
acl_set(3SEC) function translates a POSIX-draft ACL into a NFSv4 ACL when
the target file system supports NFSv4 ACLs. No translation is performed
when trying to set an NFSv4 ACL on a POSIX-draft ACL supported file
system.

Determining an ACL's trivialness
int acl_trivial(const char *path);

The acl_trivial() function is used to determine whether a file has a
trivial ACL.

Removing all ACLs from a file

int acl_strip(const char *path, uid_t uid, gid_t gid, mode_t mode);

The acl_strip() function removes all ACLs from a file and replaces them
with a trivial ACL based off of the passed in argument mode. After
replacing the ACL the owner and group of the file are set to the values
specified in the uid and gid parameters.

Converting ACLs to/from external representation
int acl_fromtext(const char *path, acl_t **aclp);
char *acl_totext(acl_t *aclp, int flags);

The acl_totext() function converts an internal ACL representation pointed
to by aclp into an external representation. See DESCRIPTION for details
about external representation.

The acl_fromtext() function converts an external representation into an
internal representation. See DESCRIPTION for details about external
representation.

EXAMPLES

The following examples demonstrate how the API can be used to perform
basic operations on ACLs.

Example 1: Retrieving and Setting an ACL

Use the following to retrieve an ACL and set it on another file:

error = acl_get("file", ACL_NO_TRIVIAL, &aclp);

if (error == 0 && aclp != NULL) {
error = acl_set("file2", aclp);
acl_free(aclp);
}
...

Example 2: Retrieving and Setting Any ACLs

Use the following to retrieve any ACL, including trivial ACLs, and set it
on another file:

error = acl_get("file3", 0, &aclp);
if (error == 0) {
error = acl_set("file4", aclp);
acl_free(aclp);
}
...

Example 3: Determining if a File has a Trivial ACL

Use the following to determine if a file has a trivial ACL:

char *file = "file5";
istrivial = acl_trivial(file);

if (istrivial == 0)
printf("file %s has a trivial ACL\n", file);
else
printf("file %s has a NON-trivial ACL\n", file);
...

Example 4: Removing all ACLs from a File

Use the following to remove all ACLs from a file, and set a new mode,
owner, and group:

error = acl_strip("file", 10, 100, 0644);
...