Privilege Manager for Unix 7.1.1 - Administration Guide

pmpolicy type policy

The Privilege Manager for Unix product uses a specialized policy (pmpolicy type policy), which allows for a more advanced security policy than is possible with the sudo policy type. The pmpolicy type uses a powerful scripting language to evaluate whether pmmasterd should allow requests based on a wide variety of criteria of what, where, when, and how users should be permitted to perform various privileged account actions.

By default, the main pmpolicy file is located in /etc/opt/quest/qpm4u/policy/pm.conf, but is not meant to be accessed directly.

pmpolicy type policy code looks like this:

if (user == "root" || "wheel" in getgroups(user)) { 
   runuser = requestuser; 
   accept; 
}

The above pmpolicy type code segment accepts requests from root or any user in the wheel group to run any command as any user.

Modifying complex policies

If your policy consists of several files (the default pmpolicy, for example) or if you want to add files to or remove files from your policy, use a checkout, change, and commit method for implementing the changes. The pmpolicy checkout command creates a working copy of the policy where you can make any necessary changes and then use the pmpolicy commit command to apply the changes back to the repository. You can use the pmpolicy add and pmpolicy remove commands to add or delete files to your working copy, respectively.

# pmpolicy checkout -d /tmp 
** Checkout to /tmp/policy_pmpolicy 
** Create directory                                                   [ OK ] 
** Check out working copy                                             [ OK ] 
** Copy files                                                         [ OK ] 
** Perform syntax check                                               [ OK ]

# cd /tmp/policy_pmpolicy/profiles 
# cp -p helpdesk.profile backup.profile 
# pmpolicy add -p profiles/backup.profile -d /tmp 
   ** Validate options                                                [ OK ] 
   ** Add file: profiles/backup.profile 
   ** Validate arguments                                              [ OK ] 
   ** Check if directory contains a working copy                      [ OK ] 
      - Directory contains an svn working copy:/tmp/policy_pmpolicy 
   ** Check current status of working copy                            [ OK ] 
   ** Check working copy is up to date                                [ OK ] 
   ** Check file status                                               [ OK ] 
   ** Add entry:/tmp/policy_pmpolicy//profiles/backup.profile         [ OK ]

# pmpolicy commit -d /tmp -l "added backup.profile" 
** Validate options                                                   [ OK ] 
** Commit copy in directory:/tmp/policy_pmpolicy 
** Check directory                                                    [ OK ] 
** Perform syntax check                                               [ OK ] 
** Verify files to commit                                             [ OK ] 
** Commit change from working copy                                    [ OK ] 
** Committed revision 3

Related Topics

pmpolicy type policy

Viewing the security profile changes

To view a summary of the changes you made to your security policy

1. At the command line, run:

   # pmpolicy log

   ** Validate options          [ OK ] 
   ** Check out working copy    [ OK ] 
   ** Retrieve revision details [ OK ] 
   version="3",user="pmpolicy",date=2012-07-11,time=15:43:30,msg="add helpdesk.shellprofile " 
   version="2",user="pmpolicy",date=2012-07-11,time=15:38:21,msg="add shellProfile to helpdesk " 
   version="1",user="pmpolicy",date=2012-07-11,time=15:35:19,msg="First import"

2. To examine the differences between two versions, run:

   # pmpolicy diff –r1:2

   ** Validate options                                          [ OK ] 
   ** Check out working copy (trunk revision)                   [ OK ] 
   ** Check differences                                         [ OK ] 
   ** Report differences between selected revisions             [ OK ] 
      - Differences were detected between the selected versions 
   Details: 
   Index: profiles/helpdesk.profile 
   =================================================================== 
   --- profiles/helpdesk.profile (revision 1) 
   +++ profiles/helpdesk.profile (revision 2) 
   @@ -18,6 +18,7 @@ 
   enableRemoteCmds = false;   # Should remote cmds be allowed for privilege cmds ? 
                               # - ie should it allow cmds if: submithost != runhost 
                               # 
   +shellProfile = "helpdesk"; 
   authUser = "root";          # runuser to use when running the authCommands 
                               # Set to 1 of the following:

The output shows the helpdesk.profile file from line 18. The line that was added in the change between version 1 and version 2 is marked with a preceding “+”.

The Privilege Manager for Unix Security Policy

Privilege Manager for Unix uses a feature full, high-level scripting language as its security policy. This is also known as the pmpolicy or legacy type security policy. As an alternative to learning the policy scripting language and developing a security policy from scratch, the default configuration installs a "ready to use" profile-based security policy and a number of pre-defined profiles.

This section examines the profile-based policy and provides specific examples of how to modify the profiles and add custom code to adapt the policy to your needs.