From: Sam Falkner <Sam.Falkner@Sun.COM>
Subject: Re: NFSv4 ACL and POSIX interaction / mask,
 draft-ietf-nfsv4-acls-00 not ready
Date: Fri, 07 Jul 2006 21:45:38 -0600
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References: <200607032310.15252.agruen@suse.de>
	<200607071355.30624.agruen@suse.de>
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Cc: Brian Pawlowski <beepy@netapp.com>,
	Spencer Shepler <spencer.shepler@Sun.COM>, nfs@lists.sourceforge.net,
	Lisa Week <Lisa.Week@Sun.COM>
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On Jul 7, 2006, at 5:55 AM, Andreas Gruenbacher wrote:

> On Monday, 3. July 2006 23:10, Andreas Gruenbacher wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I have been thinking about the problems of interaction between  
>> NFSv4 ACLs
>> and POSIX, and particularly about the issue of masking permissions  
>> through
>> chmod and after creating files or directories.
>
> Here is a follow-up after some personal feedback from Sam. I  
> believe that
> draft-ietf-nfsv4-acls-00 is not ready to become part of the NFSv4  
> Minor
> Version 1 RFC: some assumptions are not correct from a POSIX point  
> of view,
> and the way how chmod and file create modes are applied to NFSv4  
> ACLs is weak
> and not guaranteed to be correct.

I disagree -- see below.

> I will first try to clarify some of the points I tried to make in  
> the previous
> posting and point out deficiencies in draft-ietf-nfsv4-acls-00.  
> Then I will
> propose an alternative design which is more correct than  
> introducing DENY
> entries to mask permissions. (As a bonus, it is easier to  
> implement. too.)
>
>> On a UNIX system that supports NFSv4 ACLs natively, I think we  
>> should try
>> to accept as wide a range of NFSv4 ACLs as possible, but we must  
>> make sure
>> that we can preserve POSIX semantics. In particular, this means  
>> that ACLs
>> may contain ACEs for users other than OWNER@, GROUP@, and  
>> EVERYONE@, and
>> that chmod(2) must continue to provide the same kinds of  
>> guarantees as
>> without NFSv4 ACLs.
>>
>> I am assuming here that NFSv4 ACLs shall be an additional rather  
>> than an
>> alternate file access control mechanism in the POSIX sense:  
>> Alternate file
>> access control mechanisms must ``be enabled only by explicit user  
>> action,
>> on a per-file basis by the file owner or a user with the appropriate
>> privilege'', and must ``be disabled for a file after the file  
>> permission
>> bits are changed for that file with chmod( )'' according to POSIX.  
>> In other
>> words, newly created files or directories would have alternate  
>> file access
>> control mechanisms disabled. This would render NFSv4 ACLs essentially
>> useless for UNIX processes, because they would almost always be  
>> disabled,
>> and would only work for remote processes until a POSIX process  
>> chmods a
>> file or creates a directory, which wouldn't get us very far.
>
> As Sam pointed out, a subset of NFSv4 ACLs maps to an additional  
> file access
> control mechanism, while the rest goes beyond that, and therefore  
> is an
> alternate file access control mechanism.

Yes -- ALLOW ACEs are alternate file access control, and DENY ACEs  
are additional file access control.

> It is important to understand how POSIX defines additional file  
> access control
> mechanisms:
>
> [] 3.4 Additional File Access Control Mechanism
> [] An implementation-defined mechanism that is layered upon the  
> access control
> []  mechanisms defined here, but which do not grant permissions  
> beyond those
> []  defined herein, although they may further restrict them.
>
> In other words, when a file has just been created and after chmod,  
> the file
> mode permission bits define an upper bound to the permissions  
> granted to
> anyone on the system, and nobody has additional permissions.  
> Additional
> permissions (as an alternate file access control mechanism) may be
> enabled explicitly, but the next chmod must disable them again.

The use of the word "Additional" is confusing in the above  
sentence.  :-)  I think you mean "more", or similar, but "Additional"  
has a very specific meaning which (I think) isn't what you mean.

> We can classify the permissions that NFSv4 ACLs grant into  
> additional and
> alternate mechanisms as follows: everything covered by the POSIX
> read/write/execute permissions (such as ACE4_READ_DATA, but also
> ACE4_APPEND_DATA) is additional, while everything beyond that (such as
> ACE4_WRITE_OWNER) is alternate.

Note well: this is quite different from draft-ietf-nfsv4- 
minorversion1-03.txt, i.e. this is an alternate proposal.

> Under this definition, all NFSv4 ACLs that
> grant no more than ACE4_READ_DATA, ACE4_LIST_DIRECTORY,  
> ACE4_WRITE_DATA,
> ACE4_ADD_FILE, ACE4_APPEND_DATA, ACE4_ADD_SUBDIRECTORY,
> ACE4_READ_NAMED_ATTRS, ACE4_WRITE_NAMED_ATTRS, ACE4_EXECUTE,
> ACE4_READ_ATTRIBUTES, ACE4_WRITE_ATTRIBUTES, ACE4_READ_ACL, and
> ACE4_SYNCHRONIZE would count as additional access control  
> mechanisms. All
> others with ACE4_WRITE_ACL, ACE4_WRITE_OWNER, ACE4_DELETE_CHILD, and
> ACE4_DELETE are alternate.

I don't understand what is gained by this designation of additional  
access control mechanisms.  If you really say that this ACL:

OWNER@:read_data:allow
friend@your.com:read_data:allow

is additional file access control, then what is the mode on such a  
file?  Unless the mode says "group can read", then friend@your.com  
wouldn't be able to read, if the ACL is additional file access  
control.  What if you want friend@your.com to be able to read, but  
you don't want the file's owning group to read?

> As said already, the POSIX file mode permission bits define the  
> permissions of
> three classes: owner, group, and other. An additional file access  
> control
> mechanism may only further restrict the permissions granted to  
> those classes.

> To map NFSv4 ACLs to an additional file access control mechanism,

>  - we must map each NFSv4 ACL entry to exactly one of the three  
> classes.
>
>  - we must ensure that the ACL does not grant any permissions that  
> go beyond
>    the class permissions after a chmod or create.

Additional File Access Control must not grant beyond the class  
permissions *ever*, not just after create or chmod.

>  - in particular, we must ensure that the ACL grants no "alternate"
>    permissions after a chmod or create.

I don't understand this; you began this section with "To map NFSv4  
ACLs to an additional...", but here, you seem to be describing ACLs  
as an alternate file access control mechanism.

> We are free to provide mechanisms by which more permissions may be  
> enabled by
> explicit user action, on a per-file basis by the file owner or a  
> user with
> the appropriate privilege, according to POSIX.

>
> The POSIX definitions of the three file permission classes are:
>
> [] 3.173 File Owner Class
> [] The property of a file indicating access permissions for a  
> process related
> [] to the user identification of a process. A process is in the  
> file owner
> [] class of a file if the effective user ID of the process matches  
> the user ID
> [] of the file.
>
> [] 3.166 File Group Class
> [] The property of a file indicating access permissions for a process
> [] related to the group identification of a process. A process is in
> [] the file group class of a file if the process is not in the file  
> owner
> [] class and if the effective group ID or one of the supplementary  
> group
> [] IDs of the process matches the group ID associated with the  
> file. Other
> [] members of the class may be implementation-defined.
>
> [] 3.172 File Other Class
> [] The property of a file indicating access permissions for a  
> process related
> [] to the user and group identification of a process. A process is  
> in the file
> [] other class of a file if the process is not in the file owner  
> class or file
> [] group class.
>
> The key fact in these definitions is that an implementation may define
> additional members of the File Group Class, while the other classes  
> are not
> extensible.
>
> Under this definition, we end up with the following mapping:
>
>  - OWNER@ entries are in the File Owner Class,
>  - EVERYONE@ entries are in the File Other Class,

No, I don't think EVERYONE@ is in the File Other Class.  Given this ACL:

EVERYONE@:read_data:deny
OWNER@:read_data:allow

the owner would NOT be able to read.  In other words, file owner  
class and file group class are also affected by EVERYONE@ ACEs.

>  - every other entry is in the File Group Class(*).

including EVERYONE@.  ;-)

>  (*) User entries for the user who is the current file owner are a  
> special
>      case: due to how the NFSv4 ACL permission check algorithm is  
> specified,
>      I believe that they should be put in the OWNER@ class.

The current minorversion1 draft has a similar design constraint.

>> Note that this definition is in line with POSIX 1003.1e draft 17  
>> [2], while
>> it conflicts with the IETF NFS Version 4 ACLs draft [1], which  
>> associates
>> only GROUP@ entries with the group file mode permission bits in  
>> section
>> 5.1. The relevant text of IETF NFS Version 4 ACLs draft [1] is  
>> also found
>> in NFSv4 Minor Version 1 [4].
>
> Section 5.1 of [1] needs to be fixed: we must set the permission  
> bits so that
> they are a superset of the permissions of all the entries in the  
> respective
> class. (We cannot represent permissions that are not supersets of
> POSIX read, write, execute in the class, but that is not a problem,  
> as we will
> see later.)

We must do so carefully.  I'm not convinced that a superset is the  
best way to go, but we should talk about this later.

> Non-monotonic permissions
> =========================
>
> Note that with arbitrary NFSV4 ACLs, the permissions granted to a  
> process from
> multiple ACL entries will accumulate. This means that permissions  
> across
> multiple classes may accumulate as well. This can be prevented with  
> DENY
> entries in the ACL, e.g.,
>
> 	OWNER@:mask1::ALLOW
> 	OWNER@:^mask1::DENY
> 	user@domain:mask2::ALLOW
> 	group@domain:mask3:ACE4_IDENTIFIER_GROUP:ALLOW
> 	user@domain:^mask2::DENY
> 	group@domain:^mask3:ACE4_IDENTIFIER_GROUP:DENY
> 	EVERYONE:mask4::ALLOW
>
> This means that we will not have to deal with this special case  
> when computing
> the file mode permission bits, and we can achieve consistency by  
> forcing ACLs
> to be "well structured".

Yuck!  I'm glad you're not proposing this as a general NFSv4 ACL  
model.  :-)

> We could also leave this as an implementation consideration: ACLs  
> which are
> not "well structured" in the above sense will grant permissions  
> that go
> beyond what an additional access control mechanism may grant *only*  
> for
> non-monotonic file mode permission bits. With non-monotonic I mean  
> file mode
> permission bits which grant more permissions to the group class  
> than to the
> owner class, or more permissions to the other class than to the  
> group class.

I'm sorry, I just don't follow that paragraph.

>> We want chmod(2) to be non-destructive, so that a chmod to a more
>> restrictive mode and back to the original mode will leave the file  
>> with the
>> same permissions as before the changes.
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> POSIX ACLs have solved the non-destructiveness problem by  
>> introducing a
>> mask ACL entry: the mask entry applies to all group class entries,  
>> and
>> defines an upper bound to the permissions those entries may grant.  
>> POSIX
>> ACLs only have ACL entries that allow permissions, and only  
>> specify READ,
>> WRITE, and EXECUTE permissions. Therefore, the owner class and  
>> other class
>> permissions are the permissions granted to the owner and to others,
>> respectively. (Note the difference between these others and NFSv4's
>> EVERYONE@ special identifier).
>>
>> The mask concept is not part of NFSv4 ACLs. Marius A. Eriksen and  
>> others
>> have proposed to emulate the POSIX ACL mask entry by prepending (with
>> exception of OWNER@ and EVERYONE@ ACEs) each ALLOW ACE with a DENY  
>> ACE for
>> the same user, group, or special identifier as in the ALLOW ACE. The
>> permissions in the DENY ACE are set so that the entry denies the
>> permissions not granted by the mask.
>
> Internet draft-ietf-nfsv4-acls-00.txt [1] uses the same mechanism  
> to implement
> masking.
>
>> Unless we accept a very specific form of NFSv4 ACLs only (which would
>> contradict the goal stated at the top of this message, and which  
>> would mean
>> that interoperability with anything but POSIX ACLs would become  
>> difficult),
>> there is no easy way to tell DENY entries introduced to emulate  
>> the mask
>> from DENY entries added by hand.

I would refute this; see below.

>> This has two potential consequences:
>>
>>  - First, if we fail to identify such a mask-emulation DENY entry,  
>> we may
>> end up inserting another such entry. We might end up doing so  
>> repeatedly.

But we will not ever fail to identify such a mask-emulation DENY  
entry, when it is one that was created by a previous chmod.  Only in  
a degenerate case of modify-acl-carefully, chmod, modify-acl- 
carefully, chmod, etc., would you get a growing ACL problem.

>>  - Second, we may take a user-provided DENY entry for a mask- 
>> emulation DENY
>> entry, and clear mask bits from that entry. This would contradict the
>> user's intention. So the approach of inserting mask-emulation DENY  
>> entries
>> is not good enough in general.

A user-provided DENY entry would have to fit into a very specific and  
somewhat nonsensical form in order to be misidentified.  Here's an  
example:

samf@sun.com:read_data:deny
samf@sun.com:read_data:allow

If a "chmod 444" were done, the deny ACE above would be modified.   
Any other cases of chmod modifying a user-provided ACE would have to  
be essentially the same as the above example.  I think that that's an  
acceptable situation.

>> (Mapping between NFSv4 and POSIX ACLs does
>> not have this problem, because POSIX ACLs don't have DENY ACEs.)

> Therefore, the mechanism described in section 5.3 is not suitable  
> for our
> purposes, and we need to replace it with something better.

I don't agree that 5.3 is not suitable, but I would love to see  
something better.

>> In my opinion, there are two possible solutions for this problem:  
>> we can
>> (1) devise a special kind of NFSv4 ACL entry that we will  
>> recognize as mask
>> entry, or (2) give the owner/group/other class permission bits higher
>> priority than the ACL entries, and only allow permissions that are  
>> allowed
>> by both the ACEs and their associated classes.

Yikes -- I don't like either of the above solutions; let's look at  
the third...

> A third option exists as well which fits in very well with POSIX  
> and can be
> implemented in NFSv4 in a backward compatible way.
>
> Alternative Proposal
> ====================
>
> Instead of adding DENY entries to the ACL for the purpose of  
> masking, attach
> three optional attributes to each file: owner_class_mask,  
> group_class_mask,
> and other_class_mask. When those attributes are present, they  
> define which
> permissions in an ACE are effective.
>
> Each ACE is is restricted by one of these mask attributes in each  
> access
> check:
>
>  - OWNER@ entries and entries for the user@domain that currently  
> owns the file
>    are restricted by owner_class_mask.
>
>  - EVERYONE@ entries are restricted by other_class_mask.
>
>  - All other entries are restricted by group_class_mask.
>
> The effective permissions are computed as the bitwise and (&) of  
> the ACE mask
> and the associated class_mask attribute.

I take it you mean that "the effective access mask bits for ACEs of  
type ALLOW"?

> When doing a chmod(2) or when applying a create mask, the  
> owner_class_mask,
> group_class_mask, and other_class_mask attributes are modified  
> according to
> the owner class, group class, and other class permissions of the mode
> parameter as follows:
>
>  - The POSIX read permission implies the ACE4_READ_DATA,  
> ACE4_READ_ATTRIBUTES,
> ACE4_READ_ACL, and ACE4_SYNCHRONIZE bitmask flags.
>
>  - The POSIX write permission implies the ACE4_WRITE_DATA,  
> ACE4_APPEND_DATA,
> ACE4_WRITE_ATTRIBUTES, ACE4_DELETE_CHILD, and ACE4_SYNCHRONIZE  
> bitmask flags.

I'm not sure I agree about ACE4_WRITE_ATTRIBUTES, but that's a minor  
detail.

>  - The POSIX execute permission implies the ACE4_EXECUTE mask.

> This saves us from bloating ACLs with DENY entries, is more  
> efficient when
> doing a chmod, and also saves us from destroying permissions in  
> user provided
> DENY entries.

Yes, but at the cost of adding new file attributes...  Don't get me  
wrong, I do see merit in this proposal, but I don't know if it'll be  
acceptable.

> When an ACL is set, then set all mask attributes to the values  
> provided in the
> same SETATTR operation, and set the remaining mask attributes to  
> the union of
> all ALLOW ACL entries in the ACL that the class applies to.

This doesn't take the ordering of the ACL into account; is this your  
intention?  So

GROUP@:read_data/write_data:DENY
GROUP@:read_data/write_data:ALLOW

would result in a group_class_mask of read_data|write_data, right?   
(I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm just making sure I understand.)

> Without any further changes, NFSv4 clients not aware of the three  
> optional
> attributes would not be aware of the restrictions imposed by those  
> masks when
> querying for the ACL. This would create an interoperability  
> problem, and
> possible security holes. To solve this problem, we can extend the  
> GETATTR
> operation as follows:
>
> When a client requests the ACL attribute, check if it also requests  
> one or
> more of the three optional owner_class_mask, group_class_mask, or
> other_class_mask attributes. If it does, then send the requested  
> attributes
> as they are. If the client requests only the ACL without any of the  
> masks,
> return an ACL with only effective mask flags set, and with all  
> other flags
> removed.

I assume you mean in the ALLOW ACEs only, right?

> Alternate permissions in the ACL can be enabled by either setting  
> an ACL
> without providing full mask entries, or by setting the appropriate  
> bit(s) in
> the corresponding mask entry or entries.

Yes, I think I understand.

> When comparing POSIX ACLs and the NFSv4 ACL + mask attributes as  
> proposed
> here, one obvious difference is that POSIX ACLs have only one mask  
> entry,
> while I propose three mask entries here. The reason for this is  
> that POSIX
> ACLs can at most grant read, write, and execute permissions, and so  
> with
> POSIX ACLs, the File Owner Class permissions are always identical  
> to the
> permissions granted to the owner, and the File Other Class  
> permissions are
> always identical to the permissions granted to others. With NFSv4  
> ACLs,
> OWNER@ and EVERYONE@ entries may grant additional permissions that  
> go beyond
> what POSIX read, write, and execute can grant, and we need a  
> mechanism so
> that those alternate permissions can be turned off by chmod and  
> during file
> create without destroying the permissions.

Given that EVERYONE@ is not equivalent to the POSIX "other" class, it  
could be trimmed down to two.

> I would appreciate if you could take this alternative proposal into
> consideration when deciding how to proceed with NFSv4 Minor
> Version 1 at next week's IETF 66 meeting.

This proposal certainly has its merits.  I have doubts about the  
feasibility of adding two or three new file attributes, and new as- 
yet-unimplemented semantics, into the minorversion1 draft.  I have  
doubts about how this would be implemented on a Windows-based server.

The current design specified in draft-ietf-nfsv4-minorversion1-03.txt  
has implementation experience -- it's released in Solaris 10 update  
3, a shipping product.  It meets strict POSIX requirements for those  
implementations that choose to conform to POSIX.  I believe it's  
fully implementable on a Windows-based server.

I too hope that this can be discussed at IETF 66.

- Sam

>
>
> Thanks and best regards,
> Andreas
>
>> REFERENCES
>>
>> [1] Sam Falkner et al.: NFS Version 4 ACLs, draft-ietf-nfsv4- 
>> acls-00.txt
>>
>> [2] POSIX 1003.1e/2c draft 17 (withdrawn),
>> http://wt.xpilot.org/publications/posix.1e
>>
>> [3] Marius Aamodt Eriksen et al.: Mapping Between NFSv4 and Posix  
>> Draft
>> ACLs, draft-ietf-nfsv4-acl-mapping-04.txt
>>
>> [4] Spencer Shepler (editor): NFSv4 Minor Version 1,
>> draft-ietf-nfsv4-minorversion1-03.txt
>
> -- 
> Andreas Gruenbacher <agruen@suse.de>
> Novell / SUSE Labs


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