NAME¶
XPAAcl - Access Control for XPA Messaging
SYNOPSIS¶
XPA supports host-based access control for each XPA access point. You can
enable/disable access control using the XPA_ACL environment variable. You can
specify access to specific XPA access points for specific machines using the
XPA_DEFACL and XPA_ACLFILE environment variables. By default, an XPA access
point is accessible only to processes running on the same machine (same as X
Windows).
DESCRIPTION¶
When INET sockets are in use (the default, as specified by the
XPA_METHOD
environment variable), XPA supports a host-based access control mechanism for
individual access points. This mean that access can be specified for get, set,
or info operations for each access point on a machine by machine basis. For
LOCAL sockets, access is restricted (by definition) to the host machine.
XPA access control is enabled by default, but can be turned off by setting the
XPA_ACL environment variable to
false. In this case, any process
can access any XPA server.
Assuming that access control is turned on, the ACL for an individual XPA access
point is set up when that access point is registered (although it can be
changed later on; see below). This can be done in one of two ways:
Firstly, the
XPA_ACLFILE environment variable can defined to point to a
file of access controls for individual access points. The format of this file
is:
class:name ip acl
The first argument is a template that specifies the class:name of the access
point covered by this ACL. See XPA Access Points and Templates for more
information about xpa templates.
The second argument is the IP address (in human-readable format) of the machine
which is being given access. This argument can be
* to match all IP
addresses. It also can be
$host to match the IP address of the current
host.
The third argument is a string combination of
s,
g, or
i to
allow
xpaset,
xpaget, or
xpainfo access respectively. The
ACL argument can be
+ to give
sgi access or it can be
-
to turn off all access.
For example,
*:xpa1 somehost sg
*:xpa1 myhost +
* * g
will allow processes on the machine somehost to make xpaget and xpaset calls,
allow processes on myhost to make any call, and allow all other hosts to make
xpaget (but not xpaset) calls.
Secondly, if the
XPA_ACLFILE does not exist, then a single default value
for all access points can be specified using the
XPA_DEFACL environment
variable. The default value for this variable is:
#define XPA_DEFACL "*:* $host +"
meaning that all access points are fully accessible to all processes on the
current host. Thus, in the absence of any ACL environment variables, processes
on the current host have full access to all access points created on that
host. This parallels the X11 xhost mechanism.
Access to an individual XPA access point can be changed using the \-acl
parameter for that access point. For example:
xpaset -p xpa1 -acl "somehost -"
will turn off all access control for somehost to the xpa1 access point, while:
xpaset -p XPA:xpa1 -acl "beberly gs"
will give beberly xpaget and xpaset access to the access point whose class is
XPA and whose name is xpa1.
Similarly, the current ACL for a given access point can be retrieved using:
xpaget xpa1 -acl
Of course, you must have xpaget access to this XPA access point to retrieve its
ACL.
Note that the XPA access points registered in the
xpans program also
behave according to the ACL rules. That is, you cannot use xpaget to view the
access points registered with xpans unless you have the proper ACL.
Note also when a client request is made to an XPA server, the access control is
checked when the initial connection is established. This access in effect at
this time remains in effect so long as the client connection is maintained,
regardless of whether the access fro that XPA is changed later on.
We recognize that host-based access control is only relatively secure and will
consider more stringent security (e.g., private key) in the future if the
community requires such support.
SEE ALSO¶
See
xpa(7) for a list of XPA help pages
