OSF DCE Administration Guide--Core Components

OSF DCE Administration Guide—Core Components
perform the operation.
The creator of a name is automatically granted all permissions that are appropriate for
the type of name that is created. For example, a principal that is creating an object entry
is granted read, write, delete, test, and control permissions to the object entry. A
principal that is creating a directory is granted read, write, insert, delete, test, control,
and administer permissions to the directory.
Note: Unlike the security mechanisms that are enforced by most other file
systems, CDS does not require a principal to have access to all
intermediate elements in the pathname (full name) of a name in order to
perform an operation on the name. For example, consider an object entry
object1 stored in the /.:/sales directory. In CDS, you can grant a principal
access to the object entry /.:/sales/object1 without necessarily granting the
principal access to either the /.:/sales directory or the cell root directory
(/.: ).
16.6 Controlling Access to CDS Clerk and Server
Management Operations
CDS authorization allows you to control the use of CDS commands that involve local
management operations on CDS clerks and servers. Principal names for each clerk and
server are stored in the security namespace. An object entry that contains the binding
information for each clerk and server is stored in the CDS namespace in the /.:/hosts
subdirectory. Servers are represented as /.:/hosts/hostname/cds-server. Clerks are
represented as /.:/hosts/hostname/cds-clerk.
Each clerk and server maintains a separate ACL that contains entries specifying the
principals allowed to perform these operations. Unlike the ACLs that are associated
with names in the namespace, the ACLs that are associated with clerks and servers exist
exclusively to provide local control of the use of these commands.
Whenever a new clerk or server is initialized, an ACL is created on the clerk or server
system. An initial ACL entry is also created, granting the machine principal and the
namespace authorization group (subsys/dce/cds-admin) read, write, and control
permissions to the clerk or server process on that system. All other principals, both
authenticated and unauthenticated, are granted read permission. The creation of this
ACL entry ensures that, immediately after its creation, any user logged into the system
as the machine principal is permitted to execute privileged clerk or server CDS
commands.
Note: Use of the machine principal for this purpose is provided as a convenience
and assumes that the account itself (user name and password) is already
moderately secure. Namespace administrators may prefer to modify this
scheme and grant permission to particular clerks and servers on behalf of
other individual principals or authorization groups.
To edit an ACL that is associated with a CDS clerk or server, you use the dcecp acl
modify command with the -change option. For example, to change the permissions for
the user michaels in the ACL that is associated with the CDS clerk on node orion, enter
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