NAME | DESCRIPTION | ACL FORMAT | INHERITANCE FLAGS COMMENTARY | A WARNING ABOUT DENY ACES | AUTHORS | CONTACT | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

NFS4_ACL(5)              NFSv4 Access Control Lists              NFS4_ACL(5)

NAME         top

       nfs4_acl - NFSv4 Access Control Lists

DESCRIPTION         top

       An ACL is a list of permissions associated with a file or directory
       and consists of one or more Access Control Entries (ACEs).  NFSv4
       ACLs provide finer granularity than typical POSIX read/write/execute
       permissions and are similar to CIFS ACLs.
       A sample NFSv4 file ACL might look like the following (see the ACL
       FORMAT section for detailed information):
              A::OWNER@:rwatTnNcCy
              A::alice@nfsdomain.org:rxtncy
              A::bob@nfsdomain.org:rwadtTnNcCy
              A:g:GROUP@:rtncy
              D:g:GROUP@:waxTC
              A::EVERYONE@:rtncy
              D::EVERYONE@:waxTC
       Some observations:
       -  In the example output above, the user `alice@nfsdomain.org' has
          the equivalent of "read" and "execute" permissions,
          `bob@nfsdomain.org' has "read" and "write", and both `GROUP@' and
          `EVERYONE@' have "read".
       -  NFSv4 ACLs are "default-deny"; that is, if a permission is not
          explicitly granted by an Allow ACE, it is denied.  Because of
          this, the two Deny ACEs above are superfluous and could be
          excluded by the server.  See the A WARNING ABOUT DENY ACES section
          for more information.
       -  NFSv4 servers may return an ACL slightly different than one you
          set.  For example, a server that always allows reading the
          attributes of a file may silently turn on the read-attributes
          permission, and a server that does not support separate write-data
          and append-data permissions, e.g., may choose to turn off both if
          you set only one.  In extreme cases the server may also reorder or
          combine ACEs.  As a general rule, however, servers will attempt to
          ensure that the ACLs they return are no more permissive than the
          ones you set.

ACL FORMAT         top

       An NFSv4 ACL is written as an acl_spec, which is a comma- or tab-
       delimited string consisting of one or more ace_specs.  A single NFSv4
       ACE is written as an ace_spec, which is a colon-delimited, 4-field
       string in the following format:
              type:flags:principal:permissions
   ACE TYPES:
       There are four types of ACEs, each represented by a single character.
       An ACE must have exactly one type.
       A      Allow - allow principal to perform actions requiring
              permissions.
       D      Deny - prevent principal from performing actions requiring
              permissions.
       U      Audit - log any attempted access by principal which requires
              permissions.  Requires one or both of the successful-access
              and failed-access flags.  System-dependent; not supported by
              all servers.
       L      Alarm - generate a system alarm at any attempted access by
              principal which requires permissions.  Requires one or both of
              the successful-access and failed-access flags.  System-
              dependent; not supported by all servers.
   ACE FLAGS:
       There are three kinds of ACE flags: group, inheritance, and
       administrative.  An Allow or Deny ACE may contain zero or more flags,
       while an Audit or Alarm ACE must contain at least one of the
       successful-access and failed-access flags.
       Note that ACEs are inherited from the parent directory's ACL at the
       time a file or subdirectory is created.  Accordingly, inheritance
       flags can be used only in ACEs in a directory's ACL (and are
       therefore stripped from inherited ACEs in a new file's ACL).  Please
       see the INHERITANCE FLAGS COMMENTARY section for more information.
       GROUP FLAG - can be used in any ACE
       g      group - indicates that principal represents a group instead of
              a user.
       INHERITANCE FLAGS - can be used in any directory ACE
       d      directory-inherit - newly-created subdirectories will inherit
              the ACE.
       f      file-inherit - newly-created files will inherit the ACE, minus
              its inheritance flags.  Newly-created subdirectories will
              inherit the ACE; if directory-inherit is not also specified in
              the parent ACE, inherit-only will be added to the inherited
              ACE.
       n      no-propagate-inherit - newly-created subdirectories will
              inherit the ACE, minus its inheritance flags.
       i      inherit-only - the ACE is not considered in permissions
              checks, but it is heritable; however, the inherit-only flag is
              stripped from inherited ACEs.
       ADMINISTRATIVE FLAGS - can be used in Audit and Alarm ACEs
       S      successful-access - trigger an alarm/audit when principal is
              allowed to perform an action covered by permissions.
       F      failed-access - trigger an alarm/audit when principal is
              prevented from performing an action covered by permissions.
   ACE PRINCIPALS:
       A principal is either a named user (e.g., `myuser@nfsdomain.org') or
       group (provided the group flag is also set), or one of three special
       principals: `OWNER@', `GROUP@', and `EVERYONE@', which are,
       respectively, analogous to the POSIX user/group/other distinctions
       used in, e.g., chmod(1).
   ACE PERMISSIONS:
       There are a variety of different ACE permissions (13 for files, 14
       for directories), each represented by a single character.  An ACE
       should have one or more of the following permissions specified:
       r      read-data (files) / list-directory (directories)
       w      write-data (files) / create-file (directories)
       a      append-data (files) / create-subdirectory (directories)
       x      execute (files) / change-directory (directories)
       d      delete - delete the file/directory.  Some servers will allow a
              delete to occur if either this permission is set in the
              file/directory or if the delete-child permission is set in its
              parent directory.
       D      delete-child - remove a file or subdirectory from within the
              given directory (directories only)
       t      read-attributes - read the attributes of the file/directory.
       T      write-attributes - write the attributes of the file/directory.
       n      read-named-attributes - read the named attributes of the
              file/directory.
       N      write-named-attributes - write the named attributes of the
              file/directory.
       c      read-ACL - read the file/directory NFSv4 ACL.
       C      write-ACL - write the file/directory NFSv4 ACL.
       o      write-owner - change ownership of the file/directory.
       y      synchronize - allow clients to use synchronous I/O with the
              server.

INHERITANCE FLAGS COMMENTARY         top

       Inheritance flags can be divided into two categories: "primary"
       (file-inherit and directory-inherit); and "secondary" (no-propagate-
       inherit and inherit-only), which are significant only insofar as they
       affect the two "primary" flags.
       The no-propagate-inherit and inherit-only flags can be tricky to
       remember: the former determines whether or not a new child
       directory's inherited ACE is itself heritable by a grandchild
       subdirectory; the latter determines whether or not a heritable ACE
       affects the parent directory itself (in addition to being heritable).
       They can be used in-tandem.
       When a subdirectory inherits an ACE from its parent directory's ACL,
       this can happen in one of two different ways, depending on the server
       implementation:
       -  In the simple case, that exact same ACE is set in the
          subdirectory's ACL.
       -  In the other case, two different ACEs will instead be set in the
          subdirectory's ACL: one with all inheritance flags removed, and
          one with the inherit-only flag added.  The former is the
          "effective" inherited ACE (used in the subdirectory's own
          permissions checks); the latter is the "heritable" inherited ACE
          (when the subdirectory has directories created within it, they
          inherit it).  This approach makes it easier to modify access
          rights to the subdirectory itself without modifying its heritable
          ACEs.

A WARNING ABOUT DENY ACES         top

       Deny ACEs should be avoided whenever possible.  Although they are a
       valid part of NFSv4 ACLs, Deny ACEs can be confusing and complicated.
       This stems primarily from the fact that, unlike POSIX ACLs and CIFS
       ACLs, the ordering of ACEs within NFSv4 ACLs affects how they are
       evaluated.
       First, it is important to note that (despite some unfortunate
       ambiguity in RFC3530) NFSv4 ACLs are "default-deny" in practice.
       That is, if a permission is not explicitly granted, it is denied.
       In general, when a principal is attempting to perform an action over
       NFSv4 which requires one or more permissions, an access check is
       performed.  The NFSv4 ACL (assuming one is present) is evaluated ACE-
       by-ACE until every one of those permissions has been addressed, or
       until the end of the ACL is reached.  If every requisite permission
       was granted by Allow ACEs and was not forbidden by Deny ACEs (see
       next paragraph), the action is allowed to proceed.  Otherwise, the
       action is forbidden.
       Note that each requisite permission is only addressed once -- that
       is, after a permission has been explicitly Allowed or Denied once
       during an access check, any subsequent ACEs in the ACL which affect
       that permission are no longer considered.  This often introduces
       problematic ordering issues when Deny ACEs are present.
       Additionally, in some cases Group-Deny ACEs can be difficult (if not
       impossible) to enforce, since a server might not know about all of a
       given principal's memberships in remote groups, e.g.
       Because NFSv4 ACLs are "default-deny", the use of Deny ACEs can (and
       should) be avoided entirely in most cases.

AUTHORS         top

       Tools for viewing and manipulating NFSv4 ACLs, nfs4_getfacl and
       nfs4_setfacl, were written by people at CITI, the Center for
       Information Technology Integration (http://www.citi.umich.edu ).  This
       manpage was written by David Richter and J. Bruce Fields.

CONTACT         top

       Please send bug reports, feature requests, and comments to
       <nfsv4@linux-nfs.org>.

SEE ALSO         top

       nfs4_getfacl(1), nfs4_setfacl(1), RFC3530 (NFSv4.0), NFSv4.1 Minor
       Version Draft.

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the nfs4-acl-tools (NFSv4 ACL tools) 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 
       ⟨git://git.linux-nfs.org/projects/bfields/nfs4-acl-tools.git⟩ 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
Linux                    version 0.3.3, August 2008              NFS4_ACL(5)

Pages that refer to this page: nfs4_getfacl(1)nfs4_setfacl(1)