OpenSUSE 11.1 Reference - Handling ACLs

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18.4 Handling ACLs

Table 18-1 summarizes the six possible types of ACL entries, each defining permissions for a user or a group of users. The owner entry defines the permissions of the user owning the file or directory. The owning group entry defines the permissions of the file's owning group. The superuser can change the owner or owning group with chown or chgrp, in which case the owner and owning group entries refer to the new owner and owning group. Each named user entry defines the permissions of the user specified in the entry's qualifier field. Each named group entry defines the permissions of the group specified in the entry's qualifier field. Only the named user and named group entries have a qualifier field that is not empty. The other entry defines the permissions of all other users.

The mask entry further limits the permissions granted by named user, named group, and owning group entries by defining which of the permissions in those entries are effective and which are masked. If permissions exist in one of the mentioned entries as well as in the mask, they are effective. Permissions contained only in the mask or only in the actual entry are not effective—meaning the permissions are not granted. All permissions defined in the owner and owning group entries are always effective. The example in Table 18-2 demonstrates this mechanism.

There are two basic classes of ACLs: A minimum ACL contains only the entries for the types owner, owning group, and other, which correspond to the conventional permission bits for files and directories. An extended ACL goes beyond this. It must contain a mask entry and may contain several entries of the named user and named group types.

Table 18-1 ACL Entry Types

Type	Text Form
owner	user::rwx
named user	user:name:rwx
owning group	group::rwx
named group	group:name:rwx
mask	mask::rwx
other	other::rwx

Table 18-2 Masking Access Permissions

Entry Type	Text Form	Permissions
named user	user:geeko:r-x	r-x
mask	mask::rw-	rw-
	effective permissions:	r--

18.4.1 ACL Entries and File Mode Permission Bits

Figure 18-1 and Figure 18-2 illustrate the two cases of a minimum ACL and an extended ACL. The figures are structured in three blocks—the left block shows the type specifications of the ACL entries, the center block displays an example ACL, and the right block shows the respective permission bits according to the conventional permission concept, for example, as displayed by ls -l. In both cases, the owner class permissions are mapped to the ACL entry owner. Other class permissions are mapped to the respective ACL entry. However, the mapping of the group class permissions is different in the two cases.

Figure 18-1 Minimum ACL: ACL Entries Compared to Permission Bits

In the case of a minimum ACL—without mask—the group class permissions are mapped to the ACL entry owning group. This is shown in Figure 18-1. In the case of an extended ACL—with mask—the group class permissions are mapped to the mask entry. This is shown in Figure 18-2.

Figure 18-2 Extended ACL: ACL Entries Compared to Permission Bits

This mapping approach ensures the smooth interaction of applications, regardless of whether they have ACL support. The access permissions that were assigned by means of the permission bits represent the upper limit for all other fine adjustments made with an ACL. Changes made to the permission bits are reflected by the ACL and vice versa.

18.4.2 A Directory with an Access ACL

With getfacl and setfacl on the command line, you can access ACLs. The usage of these commands is demonstrated in the following example.

Before creating the directory, use the umask command to define which access permissions should be masked each time a file object is created. The command umask 027 sets the default permissions by giving the owner the full range of permissions (0), denying the group write access (2), and giving other users no permissions at all (7). umask actually masks the corresponding permission bits or turns them off. For details, consult the umask man page.

mkdir mydir creates the mydir directory with the default permissions as set by umask. Use ls -dl mydir to check whether all permissions were assigned correctly. The output for this example is:

drwxr-x--- ... tux project3 ... mydir

With getfacl mydir, check the initial state of the ACL. This gives information like:

# file: mydir 
# owner: tux 
# group: project3 
user::rwx 
group::r-x 
other::---

The first three output lines display the name, owner, and owning group of the directory. The next three lines contain the three ACL entries owner, owning group, and other. In fact, in the case of this minimum ACL, the getfacl command does not produce any information you could not have obtained with ls.

Modify the ACL to assign read, write, and execute permissions to an additional user geeko and an additional group mascots with:

setfacl -m user:geeko:rwx,group:mascots:rwx mydir

The option -m prompts setfacl to modify the existing ACL. The following argument indicates the ACL entries to modify (multiple entries are separated by commas). The final part specifies the name of the directory to which these modifications should be applied. Use the getfacl command to take a look at the resulting ACL.

# file: mydir 
# owner: tux 
# group: project3 
user::rwx 
user:geeko:rwx 
group::r-x
group:mascots:rwx 
mask::rwx 
other::---

In addition to the entries initiated for the user geeko and the group mascots, a mask entry has been generated. This mask entry is set automatically so that all permissions are effective. setfacl automatically adapts existing mask entries to the settings modified, unless you deactivate this feature with -n. mask defines the maximum effective access permissions for all entries in the group class. This includes named user, named group, and owning group. The group class permission bits displayed by ls -dl mydir now correspond to the mask entry.

drwxrwx---+ ... tux project3 ... mydir

The first column of the output contains an additional + to indicate that there is an extended ACL for this item.

According to the output of the ls command, the permissions for the mask entry include write access. Traditionally, such permission bits would mean that the owning group (here project3) also has write access to the directory mydir. However, the effective access permissions for the owning group correspond to the overlapping portion of the permissions defined for the owning group and for the mask—which is r-x in our example (see Table 18-2). As far as the effective permissions of the owning group in this example are concerned, nothing has changed even after the addition of the ACL entries.

Edit the mask entry with setfacl or chmod. For example, use chmod g-w mydir. ls -dl mydir then shows:

drwxr-x---+ ... tux project3 ... mydir

getfacl mydir provides the following output:

# file: mydir 
# owner: tux 
# group: project3 
user::rwx 
user:geeko:rwx          # effective: r-x
group::r-x 
group:mascots:rwx       # effective: r-x 
mask::r-x 
other::---

After executing the chmod command to remove the write permission from the group class bits, the output of the ls command is sufficient to see that the mask bits must have changed accordingly: write permission is again limited to the owner of mydir. The output of the getfacl confirms this. This output includes a comment for all those entries in which the effective permission bits do not correspond to the original permissions, because they are filtered according to the mask entry. The original permissions can be restored at any time with chmod g+w mydir.

18.4.3 A Directory with a Default ACL

Directories can have a default ACL, which is a special kind of ACL defining the access permissions that objects in the directory inherit when they are created. A default ACL affects both subdirectories and files.

Effects of a Default ACL

There are two ways in which the permissions of a directory's default ACL are passed to the files and subdirectories:

A subdirectory inherits the default ACL of the parent directory both as its default ACL and as an access ACL.
A file inherits the default ACL as its access ACL.

All system calls that create file system objects use a mode parameter that defines the access permissions for the newly created file system object. If the parent directory does not have a default ACL, the permission bits as defined by the umask are subtracted from the permissions as passed by the mode parameter, with the result being assigned to the new object. If a default ACL exists for the parent directory, the permission bits assigned to the new object correspond to the overlapping portion of the permissions of the mode parameter and those that are defined in the default ACL. The umask is disregarded in this case.

Application of Default ACLs

The following three examples show the main operations for directories and default ACLs:

Add a default ACL to the existing directory mydir with:
```
setfacl -d -m group:mascots:r-x mydir
```
The option -d of the setfacl command prompts setfacl to perform the following modifications (option -m) in the default ACL.

Take a closer look at the result of this command:
```
getfacl mydir

# file: mydir 
# owner: tux 
# group: project3 
user::rwx 
user:geeko:rwx 
group::r-x
group:mascots:rwx 
mask::rwx 
other::--- 
default:user::rwx
default:group::r-x 
default:group:mascots:r-x 
default:mask::r-x
default:other::---
```
getfacl returns both the access ACL and the default ACL. The default ACL is formed by all lines that start with default. Although you merely executed the setfacl command with an entry for the mascots group for the default ACL, setfacl automatically copied all other entries from the access ACL to create a valid default ACL. Default ACLs do not have an immediate effect on access permissions. They only come into play when file system objects are created. These new objects inherit permissions only from the default ACL of their parent directory.
In the next example, use mkdir to create a subdirectory in mydir, which inherits the default ACL.
```
mkdir mydir/mysubdir

getfacl mydir/mysubdir 

# file: mydir/mysubdir 
# owner: tux 
# group: project3 
user::rwx 
group::r-x 
group:mascots:r-x 
mask::r-x
other::--- 
default:user::rwx 
default:group::r-x
default:group:mascots:r-x 
default:mask::r-x 
default:other::---
```
As expected, the newly-created subdirectory mysubdir has the permissions from the default ACL of the parent directory. The access ACL of mysubdir is an exact reflection of the default ACL of mydir. The default ACL that this directory will hand down to its subordinate objects is also the same.
Use touch to create a file in the mydir directory, for example, touch mydir/myfile. ls -l mydir/myfile then shows:
```
-rw-r-----+ ... tux project3 ... mydir/myfile
```
The output of getfacl mydir/myfile is:
```
# file: mydir/myfile 
# owner: tux 
# group: project3
user::rw- 
group::r-x          # effective:r-- 
group:mascots:r-x   # effective:r-- 
mask::r-- 
other::---
```
touch uses a mode with the value 0666 when creating new files, which means that the files are created with read and write permissions for all user classes, provided no other restrictions exist in umask or in the default ACL (see Effects of a Default ACL). In effect, this means that all access permissions not contained in the mode value are removed from the respective ACL entries. Although no permissions were removed from the ACL entry of the group class, the mask entry was modified to mask permissions not set in mode.

This approach ensures the smooth interaction of applications, such as compilers, with ACLs. You can create files with restricted access permissions and subsequently mark them as executable. The mask mechanism guarantees that the right users and groups can execute them as desired.

18.4.4 The ACL Check Algorithm

A check algorithm is applied before any process or application is granted access to an ACL-protected file system object. As a basic rule, the ACL entries are examined in the following sequence: owner, named user, owning group or named group, and other. The access is handled in accordance with the entry that best suits the process. Permissions do not accumulate.

Things are more complicated if a process belongs to more than one group and would potentially suit several group entries. An entry is randomly selected from the suitable entries with the required permissions. It is irrelevant which of the entries triggers the final result access granted. Likewise, if none of the suitable group entries contains the required permissions, a randomly selected entry triggers the final result access denied.

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