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man pages section 5: File Formats

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Updated: Wednesday, July 27, 2022
 
 

prof_attr (5)

Name

prof_attr - profile description database

Synopsis

/etc/security/prof_attr
/etc/security/prof_attr.d/package

Description

/etc/security/prof_attr is a local source for execution profile names, descriptions, and other attributes of execution profiles. The prof_attr file can be used with other profile sources, including the prof_attr NIS map. Programs use the getprofattr(3C) routines to gain access to this information.

/etc/security/prof_attr entries are locally managed by the system administrator. The /etc/security/prof_attr.d directory contains additional entries installed by packages which should not be locally modified. If an entry appears in multiple files in these locations, /etc/security/prof_attr takes precedence. The profiles(1) command may be used to verify the active definition for a profile.

The search order for multiple prof_attr sources is specified in the nsswitch.conf(5) man page.

An execution profile is a mechanism used to bundle together the commands and authorizations needed to perform a specific function. An execution profile can also contain other execution profiles. Each entry in the prof_attr database consists of one line of text containing five fields separated by colons (:). Line continuations using the backslash (\) character are permitted. The format of each entry is:

profname:res1:res2:desc:attr

profname

The name of the profile. Profile names are case-sensitive.

res1

The characters RO in this field indicate it is read only and not modifiable by the tools that update this database.

res2

Reserved for future use.

desc

A long description. This field should explain the purpose of the profile, including what type of user would be interested in using it. The long description should be suitable for displaying in the help text of an application.

attr

An optional list of semicolon-separated (;) key-value pairs that describe the security attributes to apply to the object upon execution. Zero or more keys can be specified. The following keys are currently interpreted by the system:

help is a key-value pair, which is obsolete and is ignored.

audit_flags specifies per-user audit preselection flags as a colon-separated list of always-audit-flags and never-audit-flags values; for example, audit_flags=always-audit-flags:never-audit-flags. For more information, see the audit_flags(7) man page.

auths specifies a comma-separated list of authorization names chosen from those names defined in the auth_attr(5) database. Authorization names can be specified using the asterisk (*) character as a wildcard. For example, solaris.printer.* would mean all of Oracle Solaris's authorizations for printing.

pam_policy specifies the PAM policy to apply to a user. pam_policy must be either an absolute pathname to a pam.conf(5)-formatted file or the name of a pam.conf-formatted file located in /etc/security/pam_policy. For more information, see the pam_user_policy(7) man page.

access_times specifies the days and times that the corresponding set of applications and services can be accessed. When checking the rules for a specific service the evaluation begins with the access_times in the user's user_attr(5) database, and then follows the access_times in the user's profiles and sub-profiles until a matching service name or a wildcard entry is found. If no rules are found for the service, the user is exempt from time restrictions for that service. For a description of the syntax for this property, see the user_attr(5) man page.

profiles specifies a comma-separated list of profile names chosen from those names defined in the prof_attr database.

privs specifies a comma-separated list of privileges names chosen from those names defined in the priv_names(5) database. These privileges can then be used for executing commands with pfexec(1).

annotation, audit_flags, pam_policy, defaultpriv, and limitpriv have the same semantics as in user_attr(5). If they are not specified in the user_attr database, the assigned profiles are searched until a match is found.

Examples

Example 1 Allowing Execution of All Commands

The following entry allows the user to execute all commands:

All:::Execute any command as the user or role
Example 2 Consulting the Local prof_attr File First

With the following nsswitch.conf entry, the local prof_attr file is consulted before the NIS map:

prof_attr: files nis
Example 3 Displaying prof_attr entries

The getent(8) command can be used to print the definitions used for a profile following the search path configured via nsswitch.conf:

% getent prof_attr "Media Backup" "Media Restore"
Media Backup:RO::Backup files and file systems:profiles=NDMP Management
Media Restore:RO::Restore files and file systems from backups:
auths=solaris.media.extract;profiles=NDMP Management

Files

/etc/security/prof_attr

Locally added entries.

/etc/security/prof_attr.d/*

Entries added by package installation.

Notes

The root user is usually defined in local databases because root needs to be able to log in and do system maintenance in single-user mode and at other times when the network name service databases are not available. So that the profile definitions for root can be located at such times, root's profiles should be defined in the local prof_attr file, and the order shown in the example nsswitch.conf(5) file entry under EXAMPLES is highly recommended.

Because the list of legal keys is likely to expand, any code that parses this database must be written to ignore unknown key-value pairs without error. When any new keywords are created, the names should be prefixed with a unique string, such as the company's stock symbol, to avoid potential naming conflicts.

The following characters are used in describing the database format and must be escaped with a backslash if used as data: colon (:), semicolon (;), equals (=), and backslash (\).

The following authorizations are required to set various fields:

prof            name of profile            solaris.profile.manage
desc            description of profile     solaris.profile.manage
help            help file name             solaris.profile.manage
                  of profile
annotation      audit record annotation    solaris.account.setpolicy
audit_flags     audit preselection flags   solaris.audit.assign
auths           authorizations granted     solaris.auth.assign/delegate
pam_policy      PAM policy applied         solaris.account.setpolicy
access_times    PAM time policy            solaris.account.setpolicy
profiles        profiles granted           solaris.profile.assign/delegate
privs           privileges granted         solaris.privilege.assign/delegate
limitpriv       the limit set of           solaris.privilege.assign/delegate
                  privileges for the
                  command process
defaultpriv     the inheritable set of     solaris.privilege.assign/delegate
                  privileges for the
                  command process

The value of limitpriv that can be set by an authorized user for a given command is limited to the limitpriv privileges that are granted to the user.

The value of the defaultpriv that can be set by an authorized user for a given command is limited to the defaultpriv privileges granted to the user.

The solaris.auth.assign authorization allows the authorized user to grant any authorization to another user. The solaris.auth.delegate allows the authorized user to grant only the user's authorizations to another user. The same principle applies to profiles and privileges.

Attributes

See attributes(7) for descriptions of the following attributes:

ATTRIBUTE TYPE
ATTRIBUTE VALUE
Availability
See below.
Interface Stability
See below.

Availability

/etc/security/prof_attr is delivered in the system/core-os package.

/etc/security/prof_attr.d/ files are delivered in the packages that provide the software they are associated with.

Interface Stability

The format is Committed. The contents have no stability attributes.

See Also

auths(1), pfexec(1), profiles(1), getauthattr(3C), getprofattr(3C), getuserattr(3C), auth_attr(5), exec_attr(5), priv_names(5), user_attr(5), audit_flags(7), pam_user_policy(7), rbac(7), getent(8)

History

Support for /etc/security/prof_attr.d/ files was added in Oracle Solaris 11.0.0.

/etc/security/prof_attr was added in Solaris 8.