|
NAME | SYNOPSIS | INTRODUCTION | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | CONFIGURATION FILE | SEE ALSO | AUTHORS | COLOPHON |
rpc.gssd(8) System Manager's Manual rpc.gssd(8)
rpc.gssd - RPCSEC_GSS daemon
rpc.gssd [-DfMnlvr] [-k keytab] [-p pipefsdir] [-d ccachedir] [-t
timeout] [-R realm]
The RPCSEC_GSS protocol, defined in RFC 5403, is used to provide
strong security for RPC-based protocols such as NFS.
Before exchanging RPC requests using RPCSEC_GSS, an RPC client must
establish a GSS security context. A security context is shared state
on each end of a network transport that enables GSS-API security
services.
Security contexts are established using security credentials. A
credential grants temporary access to a secure network service, much
as a railway ticket grants temporary access to use a rail service.
A user typically obtains a credential by providing a password to the
kinit(1) command, or via a PAM library at login time. A credential
acquired with a user principal is known as a user credential (see
kerberos(1) for more on principals).
For certain operations, a credential is required which represents no
user, is otherwise unprivileged, and is always available. This is
referred to as a machine credential.
Machine credentials are typically established using a service
principal, whose encrypted password, called its key, is stored in a
file, called a keytab, to avoid requiring a user prompt. A machine
credential effectively does not expire because the system can renew
it as needed without user intervention.
Once obtained, credentials are typically stored in local temporary
files with well-known pathnames.
To establish GSS security contexts using these credential files, the
Linux kernel RPC client depends on a userspace daemon called
rpc.gssd. The rpc.gssd daemon uses the rpc_pipefs filesystem to
communicate with the kernel.
User Credentials
When a user authenticates using a command such as kinit(1), the
resulting credential is stored in a file with a well-known name
constructed using the user's UID.
To interact with an NFS server on behalf of a particular Kerberos-
authenticated user, the Linux kernel RPC client requests that
rpc.gssd initialize a security context with the credential in that
user's credential file.
Typically, credential files are placed in /tmp. However, rpc.gssd
can search for credential files in more than one directory. See the
description of the -d option for details.
Machine Credentials
A user credential is established by a user and is then shared with
the kernel and rpc.gssd. A machine credential is established by
rpc.gssd for the kernel when there is no user. Therefore rpc.gssd
must already have the materials on hand to establish this credential
without requiring user intervention.
rpc.gssd searches the local system's keytab for a principal and key
to use to establish the machine credential. By default, rpc.gssd
assumes the file /etc/krb5.keytab contains principals and keys that
can be used to obtain machine credentials.
rpc.gssd searches in the following order for a principal to use. The
first matching credential is used. For the search, <hostname> and
<REALM> are replaced with the local system's hostname and Kerberos
realm.
<HOSTNAME>$@<REALM>
root/<hostname>@<REALM>
nfs/<hostname>@<REALM>
host/<hostname>@<REALM>
root/<anyname>@<REALM>
nfs/<anyname>@<REALM>
host/<anyname>@<REALM>
The <anyname> entries match on the service name and realm, but ignore
the hostname. These can be used if a principal matching the local
host's name is not found.
Note that the first principal in the search order is a user principal
that enables Kerberized NFS when the local system is joined to an
Active Directory domain using Samba. A password for this principal
must be provided in the local system's keytab.
You can specify another keytab by using the -k option if
/etc/krb5.keytab does not exist or does not provide one of these
principals.
Credentials for UID 0
UID 0 is a special case. By default rpc.gssd uses the system's
machine credentials for UID 0 accesses that require GSS
authentication. This limits the privileges of the root user when
accessing network resources that require authentication.
Specify the -n option when starting rpc.gssd if you'd like to force
the root user to obtain a user credential rather than use the local
system's machine credential.
When -n is specified, the kernel continues to request a GSS context
established with a machine credential for NFSv4 operations, such as
SETCLIENTID or RENEW, that manage state. If rpc.gssd cannot obtain a
machine credential (say, the local system has no keytab), NFSv4
operations that require machine credentials will fail.
Encryption types
A realm administrator can choose to add keys encoded in a number of
different encryption types to the local system's keytab. For
instance, a host/ principal might have keys for the aes256-cts-hmac-
sha1-96, aes128-cts-hmac-sha1-96, des3-cbc-sha1, and arcfour-hmac
encryption types. This permits rpc.gssd to choose an appropriate
encryption type that the target NFS server supports.
These encryption types are stronger than legacy single-DES encryption
types. To interoperate in environments where servers support only
weak encryption types, you can restrict your client to use only
single-DES encryption types by specifying the -l option when starting
rpc.gssd.
-D The server name passed to GSSAPI for authentication is
normally the name exactly as requested. e.g. for NFS it is
the server name in the "servername:/path" mount request. Only
if this servername appears to be an IP address (IPv4 or IPv6)
or an unqualified name (no dots) will a reverse DNS lookup
will be performed to get the canoncial server name.
If -D is present, a reverse DNS lookup will always be used,
even if the server name looks like a canonical name. So it is
needed if partially qualified, or non canonical names are
regularly used.
Using -D can introduce a security vulnerability, so it is
recommended that -D not be used, and that canonical names
always be used when requesting services.
-f Runs rpc.gssd in the foreground and sends output to stderr (as
opposed to syslogd)
-n When specified, UID 0 is forced to obtain user credentials
which are used instead of the local system's machine
credentials.
-k keytab
Tells rpc.gssd to use the keys found in keytab to obtain
machine credentials. The default value is /etc/krb5.keytab.
-l When specified, restricts rpc.gssd to sessions to weak
encryption types such as des-cbc-crc. This option is
available only when the local system's Kerberos library
supports settable encryption types.
-p path
Tells rpc.gssd where to look for the rpc_pipefs filesystem.
The default value is /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs.
-d search-path
This option specifies a colon separated list of directories
that rpc.gssd searches for credential files. The default
value is /tmp:/run/user/%U. The literal sequence "%U" can be
specified to substitue the UID of the user for whom
credentials are being searched.
-M By default, machine credentials are stored in files in the
first directory in the credential directory search path (see
the -d option). When -M is set, rpc.gssd stores machine
credentials in memory instead.
-v Increases the verbosity of the output (can be specified
multiple times).
-r If the RPCSEC_GSS library supports setting debug level,
increases the verbosity of the output (can be specified
multiple times).
-R realm
Kerberos tickets from this realm will be preferred when
scanning available credentials cache files to be used to
create a context. By default, the default realm, as
configured in the Kerberos configuration file, is preferred.
-t timeout
Timeout, in seconds, for kernel GSS contexts. This option
allows you to force new kernel contexts to be negotiated after
timeout seconds, which allows changing Kerberos tickets and
identities frequently. The default is no explicit timeout,
which means the kernel context will live the lifetime of the
Kerberos service ticket used in its creation.
-T timeout
Timeout, in seconds, to create an RPC connection with a server
while establishing an authenticated gss context for a user.
The default timeout is set to 5 seconds. If you get messages
like "WARNING: can't create tcp rpc_clnt to server
%servername% for user with uid %uid%: RPC: Remote system error
- Connection timed out", you should consider an increase of
this timeout.
Many of the options that can be set on the command line can also be
controlled through values set in the [gssd] section of the
/etc/nfs.conf configuration file. Values recognized include:
use-memcache
A Boolean flag equivalent to -M.
use-machine-creds
A Boolean flag. Setting to false is equivalent to giving the
-n flag.
avoid-dns
Setting to false is equivalent to providing the -D flag.
limit-to-legacy-enctypes
Equivalent to -l.
context-timeout
Equivalent to -T.
rpc-timeout
Equivalent to -t.
keytab-file
Equivalent to -k.
cred-cache-directory
Equivalent to -d.
preferred-realm
Equivalent to -R.
In addtion, the following value is recognized from the [general]
section:
pipefs-directory
Equivalent to -p.
rpc.svcgssd(8), kerberos(1), kinit(1), krb5.conf(5)
Dug Song <dugsong@umich.edu>
Andy Adamson <andros@umich.edu>
Marius Aamodt Eriksen <marius@umich.edu>
J. Bruce Fields <bfields@umich.edu>
This page is part of the nfs-utils (NFS utilities) project.
Information about the project can be found at
⟨http://linux-nfs.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page⟩. If you have a bug
report for this manual page, see
⟨http://linux-nfs.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page⟩. This page was
obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨http://git.linux-nfs.org/?p=steved/nfs-utils.git;a=summary⟩ on
2017-07-05. If you discover any rendering problems in this HTML ver‐
sion of the page, or you believe there is a better or more up-to-date
source for the page, or you have corrections or improvements to the
information in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original man‐
ual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org
20 Feb 2013 rpc.gssd(8)
Pages that refer to this page: nfs(5), nfs.conf(5), svcgssd(8)