xref: /freebsd/sys/ufs/ufs/README.acls (revision 7bd6fde3)
1$FreeBSD$
2
3  UFS Access Control Lists Copyright
4
5The UFS Access Control Lists implementation is copyright Robert Watson,
6and is made available under a Berkeley-style license.
7
8  About UFS Access Control Lists (ACLs)
9
10Access control lists allow the association of fine-grained discretionary
11access control information with files and directories, extending the
12base UNIX permission model in a (mostly) compatible way.  This
13implementation largely follows the POSIX.1e model, and relies on the
14availability of extended attributes to store extended components of
15the ACL, while maintaining the base permission information in the inode.
16
17  Using UFS Access Control Lists (ACLs)
18
19Support for UFS access control lists may be enabled by adding:
20
21	options UFS_ACL
22
23to your kernel configuration.  As ACLs rely on the availability of extended
24attributes, your file systems must have support for extended attributes.
25For UFS2, this is supported natively, so no further configuration is
26necessary.  For UFS1, you must also enable the optional extended attributes
27support documented in README.extattr.  A summary of the instructions
28and ACL-specific information follows.
29
30To enable support for ACLs on a file system, the 'acls' mount flag
31must be set for the file system.  This may be set using the tunefs
32'-a' flag:
33
34	tunefs -a enable /dev/md0a
35
36Or by using the mount-time flag:
37
38	mount -o acls /dev/md0a /mnt
39
40The flag may also be set in /etc/fstab.  Note that mounting a file
41system previously configured for ACLs without ACL-support will result
42in incorrect application of discretionary protections.  Likewise,
43mounting an ACL-enabled file system without kernel support for ACLs
44will result in incorrect application of discretionary protections.  If
45the kernel is not configured for ACL support, a warning will be
46printed by the kernel at mount-time.  For reliability purposes, it
47is recommended that the superblock flag be used instead of the
48mount-time flag, as this will avoid re-mount isses with the root file
49system.  For reliability and performance reasons, the use of ACLs on
50UFS1 is discouraged; UFS2 extended attributes provide a more reliable
51storage mechanism for ACLs.
52
53Currently, support for ACLs on UFS1 requires the use of UFS1 EAs, which may
54be enabled by adding:
55
56	options UFS_EXTATTR
57
58to your kernel configuration file and rebuilding.  Because of filesystem
59mount atomicity requirements, it is also recommended that:
60
61	options UFS_EXTATTR_AUTOSTART
62
63be added to the kernel so as to support the atomic enabling of the
64required extended attributes with the filesystem mount operation.  To
65enable ACLs, two extended attributes must be available in the
66EXTATTR_NAMESPACE_SYSTEM namespace: "posix1e.acl_access", which holds
67the access ACL, and "posix1e.acl_default" which holds the default ACL
68for directories.  If you're using UFS1 Extended Attributes, the following
69commands may be used to create the necessary EA backing files for
70ACLs in the filesystem root of each filesystem.  In these examples,
71the root filesystem is used; see README.extattr for more details.
72
73  mkdir -p /.attribute/system
74  cd /.attribute/system
75  extattrctl initattr -p / 388 posix1e.acl_access
76  extattrctl initattr -p / 388 posix1e.acl_default
77
78On the next mount of the root filesystem, the attributes will be
79automatically started, and ACLs will be enabled.
80