System Administration Guide: Security Services

Profile Shell in RBAC

Roles can run privileged applications from the Solaris Management Console launcher or from a profile shell. A profile shell is a special shell that recognizes the security attributes that are included in a rights profile. Profile shells are launched when the user runs the su command to assume a role. The profile shells are pfsh, pfcsh, and pfksh. The shells correspond to Bourne shell (sh), C shell (csh), and Korn shell (ksh), respectively.

Users who have been directly assigned a rights profile must invoke a profile shell to run the commands with security attributes. For usability and security considerations, see Security Considerations When Directly Assigning Security Attributes.

All commands that are executed in a profile shell can be audited. For more information, see How to Audit Roles.