Scheduling Tree Structure

The following points relate to the structure of the scheduling tree, which is an area requiring special consideration by the central administrator:

• The scheduling tree is the structure used by Solaris Resource Manager to implement a hierarchy of resource and privilege control. If a sub-administrator gains control over a sub-tree of the scheduling tree that the sub-administrator would normally not have access to, that person can gain access to additional resource usage and privileges without the approval of the central administrator. One way for this to happen is if an administrator removes an lnode and leaves an orphaned sub-tree behind.

• The central administrator can use the limreport(1SRM) command to identify orphaned sections of the scheduling tree by employing the built-in orphan identifier. Any orphans found should then immediately be reattached.

• When a new lnode is created, it is mostly zero-filled, which causes most flags to have the default value of inherit. This is the desired effect for most flags, because they are used to indicate device privileges. There are two flags that are explicitly cleared at lnode creation time-the uselimadm and admin flags. This is to prevent new users from automatically gaining any administrative privilege.