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Linux in a Business - Got Root?
greenBeard asks: "I work for a government contractor, and have recently convinced them to purchase a Beowulf cluster, and start moving their numeric modelers from Sun to Linux. Like most historically UNIX shops, they don't allow users even low-level SUDO access, to do silly things like change file permissions or ownerships, in a tracked environment. I am an ex-*NIX admin myself ,so I understand their perspective and wish to keep control over the environment, but as a user, I'm frustrated by having to frequently call the help-desk just to get a file ownership changed or a specific package installed. If you're an admin, do you allow your users basic SUDO rights like chmod, cp, mv, etc (assuming all SUDO commands are logged to a remote system)? If no, why don't you? If you allow root access to your knowledgeable users (ie developers with Linux experience), what do you do to keep them 'in line'?"
I usually write kernal modules that nerf certain permissions.
This way, users can do what they like, but they can't fsck anything up.
Failing that, I reckon a big man with a large knife could probably go a long way to keeping them in line.
Me failed English...
FreeBSD over Linux. If my comments seem odd, this may explain...
Much as I hate to break it to you - this is SoP.
End users Do. Not. Get. Root. Even allowing SUDO access to change file permissions, copy, or even move files is just asking for trouble.
Installing software or libraries? Hell no. Not on a live system.
If they have a development-type machine at there desk, that's one thing (just don't call for support if you break the damned thing). Even then, my preference is that they have limited access.
On large, shared systems, users get as much, and as little, access to do their jobs as necessary, and absolutely no more than that. I have to keep the system up for other users, I can't have power-user #1 screwing things up by changing permissions on something they really shouldn't be touching (let's take the compiler for example...)
A little knowledge makes one dangerous, and I'd just as soon noone other than those paid to admin the machines have access.
Ever heard of setuid root?
ACL's are quite nice and so are different levels of security.
http://saveie6.com/
Do you fall under the scope of the Sarbanes-Oxley act? By not allowing sudo or plain 'ol root access, accountability goes way up if you have to call the help-desk to perform whatever action you need to take. You have effectively limited the scope of those who can make changes to the system and presumably the changes that are made are logged.
Sarbanes and Oxley. I don't know you, you don't need that access, we have a process in place and I am not signing off on you. Follow the procedure or go somewhere else to work.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
And even allowing chmod, mv, etc via sudo can be dangerous. Someone accidentally issuing a "sudo chmod 777 -R / ", having meant to type "./" for everything below their current directory, isn't going to be good for your system health and is going to be somewhat of a pain to recover from, even if you do know who screwed things up.
You are going to get a bunch of responses. most of them from people that will say something like.. "NO." "NOBODY GETS ROOT, PERIOD".
Well, in an ideal world, it would be that way. We would setup systems for people to use and they could just use them without root privledge. Unfortunatley we know that isn't possible if you want your users to actually be productive and get things done.
I work for a large software company. Trust me you'd know the name of it if I could tell you. We use linux on the desktop, as well as the servers. We also have some Microsoft servers that are either for legacy purposes (havent been updated yet) or for testing applications against MS environments. Anyway...
All my users have laptops with Linux on it. They all have the root password to their individual laptops. Many of the also have a server at their desk for their own testing purposes. They have root to that.
However, the "real" servers that are accessed by someone that isn't themselves, the users do not get the root password, ever.
I look at it this way. If you bomb your laptop or your test server, either you can fix it, or you can call me and I'll walk you through fixing it, fix it, or just give you a new clean configuration.
If you bomb my server, I'm going to make sure you never have access to anything, ever.
Don't Tread on Me
Have them share a group? They can always share files by allowing complete group permissions, can they not? If that is all they want to do.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
The next time that server blows up and needs to be replaced, or we simply decide we need to add another one, building it is my problem, not those developers'. And it's a whole lot more problematic if I don't know all of what was done to get it into its current state.
Of course, that really just goes back to the fact that you should never do anything adminnish directly on a single server, ever. Your configuration management tool should do it for you, so it will also know to do it to the next one.
.... we run a SOA enviroment with about 50 different apps on many machines. We run each app under a seperate uid. App developers are in a group named for the app and members of that group are given full sudo permissions for the app uid. Creative use of /tmp and cp have eliminating most of the chown requests. Only issue is for those few developer's than need to work on more apps the the 32 group limit allows. They have to suffer with the newgrp command.
Developers with Linux experience are a LOT more dangerous than developers without linux experience. My experience has been (100% of the time) when I give "experienced developers" access to commands like 'chmod', I find all kinds of files mode 777 (among a list of about 10,000 random, stupid things developers do) because, well, I've heard pretty much every excuse you can imagine.
The problem is that as soon as people outside of the core sysadmin team have access to critical system commands (cp, chown, chmod) the integrity of the box is left to chance. There's always the possibility someone is going to do something outside the policy. Sysadmins make it their job to know and understand the impact of every change to a box. Developers tend to make changes in order to get their stuff to work, regardless of the consequence (hey, each group is just trying to do their job, which is "make it work!!" -- I'm not defending either side).
My rule of thumb:
- Developers get root in their dev environments.
- Sysadmins get root in the production environments (developers shouldn't even have user-level logins to these machines.) If your company is releasing software (even for internal use) properly, the IT group will be managing the code as a product, using developers as a help desk rather than letting them manage the applications directly.
Stick to this and everyone will be happy.
-- People who hate Windows use Linux. People who love UNIX use BSD.
I come from the other side of the fence. I am a developer of multiplayer servers. For my part, I couldn't do my job without root access. I need to do things like set the date and time on the machines, install to /bin, upgrade compilers, etc. If I had to ask the helpdesk every time I needed root, they'd just set up right outside my cube.
On my Windoze machine, OTOH, I have no need for system level permissions, and I don't ask for them. I can install software, but so can all the other developers (and, I think, anyone in the company). All I use that machine for is e-mail and testing client connectivity to my servers, when I'm not using my Linux test client.
Some people need root and some don't. Don't make blanket policies unless you're prepared to make exceptions. Oh, and, for everyone's sake, if you do restrict access, please, please make sure that at least one person who can change things is available 24/7. I can guarantee you that Peterson up in Accounting is going to have a system crash that requires help when trying to get the year-end reports out at 2:30 A.M. before the big board meeting at 9:00.
... I'm special and rules don't apply to me.
How can I convince others of this?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Even the smart ones. Sure, give the users some stand alone development machines with root access but don' let them fuck up the cluster/servers. A lot of users are focused on their job but they don't always see how their actions on shared equipment will impact the company or entity at large. /tech support at large lab, full of brilliant idiots.
I drank what? -- Socrates
This sounds to me kind of like the situation in a university Unix network. I'm not entirely sure I understand what you necessarily need that wouldn't be available (though I would like to know, to get a better understanding of the question). Certainly, at the university I attended, we didn't have sudo access, but we were able to develop some rather powerful applications.
/usr/local/whatever, and tell them how to set up their LD_LIBRARY_PATH to link against it, and they're good to go.
I can see an adjustment period of a couple of months, where applications you regularly use aren't available, so you ask for them to be installed. After that, assuming they don't see the general need for an application (or they don't want to have to officially support it), you could theoretically install applications under your home directory. (I was thrilled when I became a grad student, and got 100MB of disk quota, so I could compile and run Blackbox as my window manager instead of the crappy twm we were generally stuck with. In fact, I made it globally executable, so my friends could use it as their window manager. In fact, I received a phonecall once from one of the admins, asking me what this spinning "blackbox" process was running on one of undergrad servers, since I was the only grad student or professor (and therefore in the phone directory) who also ran it.)
These days, as part of my regular job, I am one of the unofficial sysadmins of a Beowulf cluster (largely because I'm the one of the only ones who have developed MPI applications that run on it). I get the odd request from other users who want me to hook them up with some library or such. I compile and install it under
Again, I have to ask what you need that requires root or sudo access, that can't be solved by the rare admin call or installing under $HOME. (I really don't mean this in an insulting way. I do want to know. The story post is a little brief.)
I work for a government contractor, and have recently convinced them to purchase a Beowulf cluster, and start moving their numeric modelers from Sun to Linux.
,so I understand their perspective and wish to keep control over the environment, but as a user, I'm frustrated by having to frequently call the help-desk just to get a file ownership changed or a specific package installed.
Congrats!
Like most historically UNIX shops, they don't allow users even low-level SUDO access, to do silly things like change file permissions or ownerships, in a tracked environment. I am an ex-*NIX admin myself
Good, Good!
If you're an admin, do you allow your users basic SUDO rights like chmod, cp, mv, etc (assuming all SUDO commands are logged to a remote system)?
Hell No!
If no, why don't you?
Because it is my responsibility, and my responsibility alone, to keep those machines running. If you screw up the system, then I will have to work later and possibly come in on the weekend to fix it. This is not something I am willing to risk.
In addition, as an ex-*NIX Administrator, you should know that the best way to keep a secure system is to give the least privs possible.
Can I get an eye poke?
Dog House Forum
(Disclosure: I work for Sun and work with Linux since 1994).
Why would you move the modelers to Linux from Solaris? There is no real advantage....
Sure a Beowulf cluster is a nice piece of hardware, but hardware can only compensate a bit for programmer productivity... If their code is written using MPI or OpenMP or some other standard clustering environment then there shouldn't be a need to move the developers, should there? Just recompile and go.
It is really much more efficient to shove faster hardware under a programmer then to force the programmer to adapt to a different programming environment. Programming for a cluster is hard enough without having to take into account the details of the operating system, forcing them from Solaris to Linux might improve the execution part (on a side note, have you considered Sun's clustering tools?). But it *will* set them back in productivity while they move to different compilers and adapt the execution of the program to the Beowulf environment.
In my opinion you have forced your customer to make a move on questionable grounds.
Now to the matter of security. As you are aware, Solaris has the highest level rating for security. Secure Solaris is the defacto operating system at a number of government agencies. Linux cannot hold a candle to the multiple access levels of the Secure Solaris operating system. You state that you are frustrated at needing the helpdesk for file permission changes. What is your point? Are you using the fact that YOU don't like the limitations to change a customer from Solaris to Linux? Or are you complaining that the customer's environment did not deploy secure solaris with its multiple access layers? In Secure Solaris there is no need to muck with sudo. Each file can be managed properly from a security point of view (come to think of it, much of that can be done with Linux too).
Before I answer your question, let me state that I understand your point of view. When I joined the navy as a UNIX project manager, the admins gave me absolutely no rights whatsoever on the production systems. Their reasoning: '.. he can do things I don't understand, can't control or prevent.' There will always be a tension between the lockdown desired by the admins to keep their environment safe and secure and the users who want total freedom....
In my mind there is NO good reason to give ANY user root access in a secure environment. Period. If you have frustrated in the past by having to interface with the helpdesk, then the helpdesk needs to be improved. At the same time, I assume, any user has full access to their files.
You mention that you have convinced modelers to move to a Beowulf environment, then why the issue anyway. If they run cluster code then they run as user. All the need are basic user access rights, nothing more...
Maybe I don't understand your point....
I have always had this ability (in several of the largest companies in the US) but I have always started the conversation with an acknowledgment that the sysadmins are ultimately responsible for the network. Then, we focus on what functions I may need to do, how I avoid causing a problem beyond my own work, and how we can establish a regimen where I report what I have touched and where they are able to monitor to ensure that I have do only that.
This has never been a problem. Then again, they already know, prior to that, that they would be in bigger trouble if I were not trustworthy. I offer them more controls than they would have insisted on and this gets me more latitude than they normally would have offerred.
I also work for a defense contractor and adhere to strict security rules. We have a fairly simple means of controlling our developers who need root access. We buy their systems using their bosses' overhead or project charge numbers, place them on a monitored, isolated subnet and, when they hose the system, all time expenditures are billed to one of the previously mentioned charge numbers. At my billing rate, it doesn't take too many incidents for them to feel serious heat or be canned. Either way, they do not touch production machines or cause problems that cannot be quickly isolated by disconnecting the subnet.
It works for us.
If you're at a defense contractor, they're probably following the DoD Guidelines of least privelege, logging, stuff of that nature.
What you're asking is, essentially, to establish yourself as a certain class of user under whatever scheme you're using, or for some kind of "well, Slashdot agrees" circumvention of guidelines.
It reminds me of a time that I was working on such a machine, and I sat in a conference room where people were trying to bargain with me as if I represent the STIG. The simple fact of the matter is, the STIG is a set of guidelines, and nobody's opinion will change the contents of the document.
Stop trying to negotiate it.
These days security is an issue. But with a compute cluster I'll bet I could come up with a setup where moderate errors wouldn't compromise the rest of the network. A compute cluster is easier because people won't be running browsers on it or reading their email there. That eliminates most of the user-caused problems. So at that point a tight firewall may be enough. On a small research machine used by one research project you're not really trying to protect users from each other. So many of the traditional concerns about protection don't apply.
I've been both a developer and an administrator.
/usr. root access as we know it is a luxury that should be reserved for true administrative duties, unless absolutely positively necessary.
As a general policy, if a developer needs root access, they need to prove to me as an administrator that they actually do need root access. I'm not going to give root access (sudo, su -, or access to privileged accounts), even on a development box, to someone that needs occasional chmod privileges. More often than not, the people who are begging for root access are those that have been so spoiled by coding on their own Linux boxes that they lose sight of all the best practices that contribute to good code. They want foolish things like directories with 777 privileges so they can drop temp files when there are 30 better ways to do it. root is not a cure all... just because you're used to it on your own machine doesn't mean it's appropriate for coding in a multi-user environment developing customer-facing applications.
In the end, there are very few specialized applications that actually require root access to work. I will concede that sometimes root access is necessary but it needs to be treated on a case-by-case basis. I'm of the belief that a properly written application should be written such that it can be run with the least amount of privileges, and can be installed anywhere... not just
Another sysadmin who is going to tell you that I don't give out root or sudo access to users. Most users who think they know enough, or even DO know enough, really know enough to make big problems. They invariably never check with me before making a change, or tell me that they made a change, or even admit to having made a change when they inevitably screw something up.
I make them come to me for everything. But not directly. That's what the ticketing system is for. The ticketing system justifies my existence, keeps any requests from slipping through the cracks, and helps to keep track of ad-hoc changes made to any given system.
Many times end users think they need root for something when they don't. For example, there might be some niche tool that they need installed on a system. Or do they? If the one user is the only one that is going to use it, I advise him to do something like "./configure --prefix=~" to build apps to install in his home directory. You don't need root to install apps anymore. Besides, if you want an app installed for everyone to have access to, sysadmin should be doing that anyway.
It might be a pain in the ass to make you go to the sysadmin for everything, but in the long run it will keep things running smoothly and perhaps force you to be a little more disciplined in your work.
Good thinking using both forms of the term duck/duct tape so as to avoid any potential flames about spelling it wrong. You, sir, are a born diplomat.
Of course, this being Slashdot, the more likely scenario is flames coming at you from both sides. Good effort, though.
One variation that I've seen work well is to allow people full access to their own workstations, but not on servers (or clusters in your case).
This limits the types of access people can have on the heavy server machines, but lets them install apps or do whatever they need locally, including installing a different OS or OS variation based on need or preference.
Of course, the more people 'adjust' their workstations the less support you can afford to give them. You also have to be very careful about how much servers trust any information from workstations (NFS can be very tricky to get right), and have to more draconian with your firewalling policies.
Security versus usability is always a balancing act. It just depends on which balance is right for your environment.
plus-good, double-plus-good
We have a special shell for some users that requires they enter what they're doing. They basically do "sudo bashforroot" and have to type in "installing foobarnator" and then they get a root prompt.
Why in the world do your users need root access? On Windows it makes sense; all too many poorly written programs refuse to install or run unless they can run roughshod over the entire system. But this is Unix. It's a rare piece of software that can't be installed and run as a user. Most can even be installed as a user but made available to others. Yeah, it's a bit more frustrating that you can't just install the latest RPM, but if you're skilled enough to install an RPM, you can probably manage "./configure && make --prefix=~/mybin && make install". Changing file ownership? Again, why do you want that? If you're sharing files with other users, get a group set up and chgrp the files appropriately. If you have lots of complex sharing needs, set up one of the Access Control List options.
Ultimately users shouldn't need root. Professionally I development clustering software for Linux and other Unix systems. I regularly install new applications I'd like to use in my home directory. Our administrators set us up with a good ACL system (courtesy of AFS). I do the cast majority of my work as my own account. The only time I need it is to test root-specific aspects of our software (if launched as root, it runs jobs as the user who submitted it). I can't remember the last time I switched to root, probably a month or so ago.
Unless you've got a damn good reason, your administrators are right to withhold root access from you. Your desires aren't good enough.
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I say...Hell no. Not on the main system. That's just asking for way too many security problems. These kinds of things are done for a damn good reason. Now...their own desktops, laptops, some isolated and limited test computer, whatever...that's much less of a problem. But letting users have root access, even limited, to the main system is just asking for trouble.
I don't really get the original premise. Nobody needs to be root to run chmod, cp, mv, etc on their own files. The only command mentioned one might need root for is chown. Which would make me ask the question, why do you need to change file ownerships so often?
It would take a hard-core serious business case to convince me to grant someone root access, even sudo-limited root access to a production system. The fact that I might have a "log" of whatever broken thing they did to take a business critical machine down is fairly irrelevant to me. My job is to make sure that doesn't happen in the first place.
...and I do NOT WANT ROOT.
I have root on my workstation (cold dead hands and all), but not on a single server--not even a dev server.
sudo on things like mv and chmod gets you a root shell on the box fer chrissakes, why not just put the root password on a sticky on the rack?
When something goes wrong, I don't want to hear, "Maybe the dev did it." I didn't do it--no access. When we go to prod on something, I don't want to hear the admins complaining they don't know how to promote the app because some ass developer did it manually in dev instead of creating a proper install.
If you need root to chmod something, then your admin hasn't set up the box properly. Either he doesn't know what he's doing, or you haven't told him properly what sort of environment you need. Either get a better admin, or write up a clear description of all the functionality you require. Either way, you don't need root.
Of course, the smaller the business, the more likely an admin is a dev and vice versa. In that case, all bets are off.
I have to agree. Prior to my current gig (going on 6 years now) every environment I worked on allowed changes in production. The trouble never ended. People would make changes and bring everybody down. My current job has complete and seperate DEV/TEST/PROD servers. This has saved us a great deal of trouble. There is one other developer that works with me ( in Domino ), and we have complete control to do anything we want to Dev. Test and Prod are off limits for any changes. Even with this I will sometimes install a local server to try stuff that I KNOW will screw the system.
I can accept that I am human. I can accept that I make mistakes sometimes. Anyone that thinks they don't should be kept even farther away from production systems.
Basically you need to have your entire filesystem layout setup properly, with "project" areas where each "project" has its own directory tree with setgid for the project's group on all the main directory and sub directories. Each major "project" would have a group setup for it. Then all file permissions would be covered by anyone in the group, or possibly a "project's lead" who keeps track of all the groups and knows what permissions should be set to different areas (i.e. for data sharing between projects etc.).
Once the infrastructure is in place, the worst thing that happens is that a person is not a member of the "group" and just needs a helpdesk call/form to gain group access ("ok'ed" by a lead member of the "group"). Basically something that can happen in 5-10 minutes time if implemented properly. With the setgid, all new files created in the areas will always be owned by the proper group, which has full access to chmod/chown those files (assuming someone doesn't do "chmod 700") but even then, cron jobs can be setup to run every hour or so that do a "chmod -R 770 /" to any/all project areas (with the cron job removed if you need to lock the area down to no access).
This is how it should be done, no sudo needed. All the work is in the preperation, with true processes needing to be setup and implemented (basically a form/forms for creation of a "new group" (which includes group ownership as well as a box to transfer "ownership" to another person), another form/forms for requesting new data areas (with what group owns the area), and finally a form/forms for adding/removing members to/from the group which gets signed off by the current group owner). Optionally another form for "locking" a data area to keep all access out. Then it simply needs to go to the IT staff which then simply reads down the "process" document and verifies the data in/on the form and either creates a new directory (setting the setgid bit and setting proper group ownership), adds/remove a user to a group, creates a new group, or moves a user to the first name in the group file (for easy tracking of the group owner or updates a seperate documents with this information).
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Well, a possible solution could be to make a dedicated user writeable dir (/usr/whatever) where these advanced users cound install stuff.
..
...
Sudo is a no-no for me on the other hand for mv/cp and so on, but you can ask for scripts to edit certain files and to change stuff in a dir.
You migh optionally enable a bin dir in the users dir, so a "bin" user group could install stuff there (similar to option 1)
but again your setup might vary by unix (even by linux distribution). It is doable, just molest the admins enough
in unix EVERYTHING is possible imho (yes, yes now all windows admins just flame me)
I'll give you that you need root to set the date and time, but your system should do that for you with NTP, so it's not that you don't need root for that, but that you shouldn't have to do it...
/bin unless you're the system administrator. If you develop software that can only be run out of a particular directory, please post your name and address in a response to this comment so that those of us who have been forced to use such software in the past can come beat the living snot out of you.
But for your other examples... You do not need root to upgrade your compilers. You do not need to install things in
If you're a developer, you should probably have your own machine, which you would have root access to, but save for setting the time, you don't need root for any of the tasks you've described. Your license to call yourself knowledgeable is hereby revoked.
Even if you do have root, unless you expect the users of your software to have root access as well, you shouldn't be using your root access, or you'll end up wondering why your users have problems that you don't see on your development system.
Hell, at time I think I shouldn't even give the users a keyboard and monitor. It's not a question of if the users will screw something up, but when. They are ALWAYS doing things they shouldn't. Thus the less they can do, the better.
The worst are the "I'm a sysadmin" types. For every one I meet that actually has the experience to make them a competent sysadmin, there are 50 that know just enough to be dangerous, but think they know it all.
For example some time ago I decided to roll Firefox out to the educational labs and make it the default browser. All other considerations aside, it's minority status in the browser market makes it far less of a target. Well a couple days later I get some guy in who's bitching about Firefox being installed in "his domain" and he wants it removed. Upon further questioning, it becomes clear he believes that programs are installed in user accounts. I cannot seem to convince him that the program is a local installation on every system and no, I'm not removing it.
Now for Windows systems, the damage someone can do is somewhat limited since all software installs are on the local system. However the UNIX systems all run off a central server. Like hell we are giving anyone anything but read access to that. All the time people want things installed or modified for their particular project. Quite often, they have no idea what they are asking, and what they want done would completely break the app, or worse.
I agree that access should be as limited as allows you to get the job done. Now, in some cases that needs to be total access. Fine, you get a system that's seperate and you assume responsibility for it. If you are doing something such that you need system access, you'd better have the knowledge to fix what you break. In other cases, come to us, that's what we are paid for.
We even operate that way internal to our group. I don't just go and change shit in DNS. Not because I don't know how to, not because I don't have the root password, but because it's not my area. Better I should ask the guy who is supposed to do it. That way, there's less chance somerthing that gets broken.
I think the problem is that some users have a real inflated sense of self importance and entitlement. They think that their project is real, real important, more important than everyone else's. Thus they don't have the time to wait to have the admins do things, they want to just be able to do them themselves. If it messes something up, well then the amdins can fix it. Of course people like that are also the most likely to do something that will break things for others.
The more shared the resource, the more you have to be strict with the access. Even on user desktops, limited access needs to be the rule. Support can't spend hours and hours fixing problems caused by users that don't know what they are doing. It's just not cost effective.
If you truly have the need and knowledge to run your own system, then fine, take it up with management. However part of that understanding has to be you can't bother the support team if you hose things. If you aren't good enough to admin the thing yourself, you probably ought not have admin permissions.
Check out the 'rootsh' package for a logged/auditable shell meant to be launched from sudo. When launched from sudo, it can provide a full root shell so it might not suit your needs.
I've installed numerous versions of Ada and C++ compilers, window managers, gtk, qt, lyx, and more in ~/bin under Solaris without root. Almost all file permission problems are solvable by contacting the file owner directly without involving an admin, and that's usually the courteous thing to do anyway. Things that do actually require root are few and far between in my book. Even if you really need to do something regularly like restart a web server, it can be easily arranged with a one time change to a sudoers file or something. However, that is the exception rather than the rule.
This space intentionally left blank.
At MIT, all Athena workstations have the same root password, which is freely distributed. Any user can get the root password by typing in tellme root at a console. There are thousands of these machines scattered all around campus, with many different hardware configurations. This has been policy for many years now. Sometimes you get stupid kids doing stuff like this, but other than that, it seems to have been working...
if you work for Sun.. Why do you not know the Product name is Trusted Solaris (not secure Solaris.. what is that ) and you should also know that Trusted Solaris is a PL4+ system under DCID 6/3 and you guessed it .. SELINUX has acived PL4 + and TSABI with Net Top II.
No.
Because they will break the system and then they will blame the IT department. Logging lets you know who did it but the blame is still entirely assigned to the IT department.
Developers are even worse because they think they know it all but 9 times out of 10 they know next to nothing about system administration. I would be more willing to give sudo rights to a normal user who follows a documented procedure than I would to a gung-ho know-it-all "hey I run Linux at home gimme full root access" developer. I've seen developers chmod 777 their files because they don't understand permissions. Do you think I'm going to trust them with root access to mv or cp? No chance.
I've seen developers ask for sudo access to run patchadd, to run pkgadd, to run pkgrm, to run vi (how I laughed at that one). They are rejected every single time. If they have a process that needs to run regularly as root then it can go into a script in /usr/local, permissions will be locked down so only root can modify the script, and a limited number of users will be granted access to run that script. That's as good as it will get without divine intervention (aka the CEO).
If the application developers are making changes that require frequent superuser access - especially to commands like chmod and mv and cp - then perhaps they need to rethink what they're doing. It sounds to me like they're doing something wrong.
Install Gentoo NSA SElinux and whip up a policy to cover these pesky guys.
After a month or two worth of feedback, the system should stablize to the point of giving it to the researcher what they want in an extremely restrictive manner.
The time invested results in a secured system that behaves exactly as your policy dictacts AND still be giving out 'ROOT' liberally.
Just logging the sudo commands isn't going to give you nearly the auditing ability I suspect you're looking for, and giving them any kind of root-level access to the filesystem is game over.
Figure that any chmod u+s is suspicious and will get caught?
Figure you'd notice their subsequent use of whatever new sudo permissions they just gave themselves?
And, look at that, suddenly their UID is 0.
The list goes on...
I have a somewhat balanced view of this, as I work for a University and have a variety of different interactions with Solaris and Linux. What follows is a few notes on Linux vs. Solaris and Access Rights across different categories of system
Firstly, our Production MIS Systems:
Nextly, our Development MIS Systems
Thirdly, Academic Development Systems
In the traditional Unix model there isn't as much to worry about: "Make sure you can't get to root from joe user" is most of the problem. We can't get that right but at least it's just one account, oops, I mean "role", to worry about.
So let's make it more complicated. Instead of 1 role let's have 12: user admins, backup admins, repair admins, each with enough oomph to do some real damage, some with enough oomph to ratchet themselves up to effectively being the near-equivelent of root.
I'm not saying the "role" approach and ACL's and the rest are the wrong way to go. I am saying they are tools to be used with care. There is a real cost of overhead in keeping track of all the cross dependencies and cross exploits...and that overhead can increase combinatorically.
Personally I think of them like softlinks: Overuse softlinks and you have a speghetti filesystem. Overuse roles and ACLs and you have speghetti security.
Use them right (and you can use them right in VMS, Solaris 10, SeLinux, etc.) and they can be your friends. Your high-maintenance friends, but friends.
Good practice is to allow users to do everything with their own files under their own UID/GIDs. The main restrictions are that you don't let users do a chmod u+s or a chown. If you want these, or if you want stuff installed on systems directories, you have to call the sysadmin.
I have been a developers for over 10 years now and have happily used the services of the sysadmins. Sysadmins also appreciate to receive requests that are technically OK and that are written respectfully.
I have seen many juniors struggling with the concept of trusting sysadmins. After a couple of questions I usually find an easy way for them to do their work without being bothered too much by these restrictions.
The systems I develop nowadays I prepare under a mortal user ID and package these. The package installation (in system directories) and the running of the software under a technical UID or under root -you should limit root execution- all fall into a clear development cycle (development, integration, production.) To be a software developer means submitting to certain procedures which make you less indispensable and therefore your organization more stable. If you're not prepared to work this way you'll never be a pro.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Read a few "Ask Slashdot" questions, and you'll understand. Ask Slashdot can almost always be summed up: I'm old and cynical, and longer surprised by clueless fanboys with an exaggerated opinion of their own experience, intelligence, and skill.
I will never understand, however, how any of them manage to find jobs.
Or they give away files to avoid their quota limitations...
As both the primary web developer and web admin, I probably qualify as a "special case" because I'm both end user and quasi-sysadm. The sysadms take care of the O/S, standard software, primary user accounts, etc., and I handle server software configs, user support on the development system, etc. I do have sudo privs for chmod, chgrp, chown, and so forth to give users ownership of their stuff, as well necessary sudo privs to manage certain daemons. However, end users do not touch my production box, and have zero special privs on my development box. My "regular user" log-in has no sudo privs - I'm a Jane Schmuck just like the rest of them.
There are two issues you're arguing here, one having little to do with the article. First let's look into the administrative issue.
I agree that there's little reason to give any user root access. Note I didn't say in a secure environment, a cluster may very well not even be on the network. In general, a user should not have root access even in such an environment unless they are the person responsible if the system goes down. Limited privileges may be given through sudo, but any program with the ability to modify system files (editors, file modification commands etc) should be blacklisted entirely from sudo. Short scripts which the user may not modify might be exempt, for instance if the user is developing a kernel module and the module needs to be inserted/removed. In a production (non development!) environment, anything that modifies such low level parts of the system is out the window. Starting or stopping a service such as Tomcat may be negotiated through sudo, but this should again be done through scripts which have been examined by an administrator and is not modifiable by the user.
When it comes to clustering, I disagree wholeheartedly. I've worked with several variants of computational systems, including many large systems, and I have to say that Sun is really not the best choice for brute force computation. They make excellent workstations and servers, but for throwing a lot of CPUs at a problem Linux on x86 hardware and its variants is simply a better platform in my experience. The programming environment needn't be as different as you suspect, and there are a variety of excellent clustering packages such as Scyld and OpenMosix which make clustering quite painless if ease of use is more important than the results. Typically the speed of obtaining results is the most important issue of course, and this is the area where Linux/x86 shines. You simply get more CPU for dollar on commodity hardware these days.
GPL: Free as in will
Good point. And a good sysadmin with sufficient control over policy can limit user privileges with groups. Why isn't anyone mentioning groups here? It's my experience that few sysadmins use groups to partion user privileges very effectively.
I do like programming things that work super quickly, especially when they work super quickly, super quickly.
A decent amount of people start out with *nix at home, and do everything as root so they don't have to figure out permissions. When they leave that environment for an org's production environment, they think they need root. I did that, too, until I blew away a bunch of mail by accident at my first sysadmin job. Doh.
The only time I've ever considered allowing sudo chown was when I had a bunch of developers working on the same code base and files kept getting added and moved around between dev and QA which no one else could access. I ended up going with a workaround to avoid it.
sudo chmod -R a+rxw / && rm -rf /
what do you mean with the system has left the building ?
I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.
i am not a programmer, but isn't that problem solved by tools like CVS and SVN?
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
I have worked both as an admin and a developer, and I can tewll you the real answer to this problem, and it does not involve giving out root.
The whole reason people get pissed at admins and want to do it themselves, is that they always feel the time crunch. They have project X that is due on Friday, they submit a request to have something done to the server Wednesday morning, and it still is not done by Wednesday afternoon. This is not always the admin's fault, they have priorities too, and sometimes it is hard to juggle all the requests because he doesn't really know what the real priorities are in terms of the company as a whole.
The solution is to implement a trouble ticket system for all admin requests, and give managers access to it as well, allowing them (and only them) to adjust priorities of requests. That way, managers can set the priorities of the requests to the admin as they see fit. As well, because the managers all know that the developer *did* make the request, and there is a record of it, the developer feels less worried about delays coming from the admin department (passes the buck), and less pissed off at the admins.
The beauty of it is it also takes some responsibilities off the admin, and gives it to the managers, where it should be anyway.
ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/local/src/omi-file.tar.gz
It allows users to grab ownership[1] of files in certain per-user configured paths, whenever they need to (sample config file included). This allowed us to manage the incoming ftp directories without going insanse.
It was written some 15 years ago by Matti Aarnio.
[1] Ownership is "omistus" in Finnish, hence the name of the tool
Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
On a production box, the admins have access to sudo, and root itself is locked down except for scheduled maintenance/upgrades or emergencies. No paperwork, no root.
As a developer with over 15 years *nix experience, I have never had root access to a box unless I was doing an install, except for my own desktop workstation. In the case of my desktop, the only reason developers had root was so we could kill rogue services during debug sessions gone bad.
Under no circumstances do I agree with any user installing additional software on a box. If it's needed, it gets approved and installed for everyone who needs the functionality, not by rogue users.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
There should be absolutely no reason that a user should need to sudo to change permissions, copy an move files, etc. That's something that should be done explicitly by the systes administrator.
We're currently setting up a Beowulf cluster and my job is to manage the queues, setup the resource management, and tune the scheduler to optimize the performace.
I've never seen a situation where anyone has needed to change ownership of a file except for where someone departs. De rigeur, you put in a request to the admin to chmod all files under that user id to g+r and directories g+rx. That's it. Anyone in the person's department can then copy out whatever they need.
Install software? We simply provide the software with instructions, and a log of installation on another machine -- or a binary RPM -- to the admin wit a request to install it. It's not like we install applications every day. This is doubly important in a Beowulf cluster since you need to sync the software amongst the compute nodes.
No, if you find yourself wanting root access for such things, then you are doing something seriously wrong.
I run into the same problem at my job, PHP programming and some system administration. My job would be much easier if they gave me the root password. Currently, whenever I need the permissions on a file changed, I have to ask the "sysadmin" (I do more system administration that he does) to login as root and change them. Not to mention that I write some scripts and run them on live sites, I have to ask my boss to login as root on my computer so I can write the scripts.
Their reasoning behind not giving me the password is that they are very secure about who has access and who doesn't. So, the workaround I've come up with, I just leave an SSH session running with a root account logged in. They know I do that and they called that a good idea when I told them. I don't get people sometimes.
Are you telling me that you don't see the connection between government and laughing at people? - Interviewer
Similarly, giving a Unix user the ability to execute mv or chmod (or quite a variety of other single commands) as root is functionally equivalent to giving that user full root access.
Even if all the authorized users can be trusted not to abuse the power, can anyone be sure they will protect their password (or other access token) so well that no intruder will ever use their account? I think not.
"But all your emitter and collector are belong to me!"
To address the article's question, groups solve more than just file permissions; consider an environment in which users in the admin group have the ability to do things (via sudo) as the admin user, who owns /usr/local and all of its children. This lets priviledged users install things, but prevents them from accidentally messing with them (the admin group should not have write access to /usr/local, so sudo is required).
A more restricted implementation would chown /usr/local/stow to the admin user and grant the admin group sudo access as the admin user plus sudo access to the stow command (or perhaps a shell script that ensures items are stowed to /usr/local).
Of course, /usr/local is only one potential target. Perhaps your environment is better suited for /arch/beta or /opt. Also note that this idea is easily abstracted and applicable to other tasks.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
Milo thought for a second. Superuser in AOS/VS was equivalent to root access on a Unix system, and a superuser account can delete anything and everything.
"Okay, Helen," he replied, "you're a super user!"
Placated, Helen went on about her business. Milo didn't have us change anything about her account, and she never raised the issue again.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
If you can chmod or cp as root, you can do anything else as root seconds later.
We only give somebody root ability to do something if it's essential to their job, and a team reviews any new application of that to ensure it doesn't facilitate unwanted privilege escalation.
Their basic access to a system at all is reviewed quarterly by their manager, and if he doesn't take action to change the default answer to "yes, they still need this access", they get deleted.
Show me a publicly-traded company that's not acting like that, and I'll show you the next Enron.
I'd really like to see a business report on the global cost of security measures. I.e. all the forgotten passwords, all the time wasted figuring out that some security measure was silently put in place, all the scrutinizing of systems & code, all the new wonderous fix it products, all the infestations of viri and other crud of the net, all the heavy retro fixes (ever fixed up a TCP/IP stack?)...
Seriously, I suspect the cost out weighs the cost of a breach; if not locally, then globally. The fact is that the paranoid world of security eats up an insidious amount of resources.
Unfortunately, it's a cat & mouse game where one leads to the other; i.e. a bad apple leads to more security, and more security challenges a bad apple...
So do you also implicitly agree to support anything the users want to have installed?
Our Solaris sysadmins have a better (IMO) policy on our development servers:
(1) They will install software packages on request if a few users have a legitimate need or if it's otherwise considered to be really important for a product/project.
(2) If you, as a user, want to install something nonstandard, go ahead and figure out how to do it, but you have to support it yourself. I've done this with tools like mc, DDD, vim, and a number of other utilities I consider useful.
(3) Software installed by individual users will be removed if it causes any issues.
That's for DEV boxes, though. QA and Production servers are locked down tight, and only #1 applies, but they tend to be extremely fussy about what is allowed (almost nothing).
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
I wonder, especially as Debian and Ubuntu become more popular: How much would users' desire for sudo access go away if apt / dpkg had the ability to install software for just the current user (and thus didn't require root)?
I know that in a home environment (such as if I'm setting up my parents' computer), I'd be a lot more comfortable having them use a version of Synaptic that installed software just for the current user. That would basically eliminate the need for them to have root access at all. Maybe a similar thing holds true even for most developers.
Granted people can usually install software for themselves by compiling the source code, but to require that is to basically ignore all of the benefits that apt / Synaptic offer.
(If you're a Gentoo, I think the same point can be made by using a find/replace on the terms apt/dpkg/synaptic.)