[Freeipa-devel] User life-cycle: nsAccountLock

[thierry bordaz]

On 06/18/2014 03:31 PM, Simo Sorce wrote:
> On Wed, 2014-06-18 at 12:47 +0200, Martin Kosek wrote:
>> On 06/17/2014 05:59 PM, thierry bordaz wrote:
>>> On 06/16/2014 03:04 PM, Rob Crittenden wrote:
>> ...
>>>     Thanks for your precise feedback and sorry for my late answer.
>>>     So if I try to consolidate my understandings, the workflow would be:
>>>
>>>      1. Staging (container: cn=staged
>>>         users,cn=accounts,cn=provisioning,SUFFIX)
>>>           * ipa stageuser-add <login>
>>>             It creates a stage entry with
>>>
>>>                 uidNumber: -1
>>>                 gidNumber: -1
>>>                 ipaUniqueID: autogenerate
>>>                 description: __no_upg__
>>>                 manager: checks that the DN is an active user
>>>                 nsAccountLock: True
>> I was thinking about the nsAccountLock part again. Should we really force
>> provisioning systems to set it to True for staged users? Should we even
>> manipulate it in stageduser plugin?
> No, thinking hard about it I think nsAccountLock should be completely
> ignored in the staged area. It is an operational attribute that is
> responsibility of IPA admins, provisioning systems have nothing to do
> with it. If they do not want a user to be available they simply do not
> provision it. If they do then it is on the admin to decide if/when to
> unstage the user and make it available.

A Stage user is waiting for an approval before being Active. And an 
approver may have a look at its properties to decide.
During the time it remains in Staging, admin do not want someone to bind 
with that entry even if the provisioning system set the password.
pre-bind plugin or cos are possibilites to prevent binding with that entry.

>
>> The original reason why I proposed it in
>> http://www.freeipa.org/page/V4/User_Life-Cycle_Management
>> is to prevent LDAP BINDs on such user or Kerberos authentication on such user.
>> Wouldn't it be better to simply just update KDC backend plugin and LDAP BIND
>> pre-bind callback to prevent authentication to users in cn=provisioning,SUFFIX?
> The staged user should have it's userPassword anmd KrbKerberosKey
> removed, so no binding should be possible.

That means a Delete user being staged (ipa stageuser-add <login> 
--from-delete) will loose its password/keys.
I believe it is an acceptable limitation else the admin would prefere to 
do 'ipa user-undelete <login>'.
>
>> This would allow us to be sure that nobody can bind/authenticate to these users
>> without having to manipulate nsAccountLock attribute.
> We should just make sure no credentials are set ?
> Is there any valid reson for the provisioning system to be allowed to
> set userPassword ? (It can't set KrbKerberosKey anyway)
Does that mean stageuser-add/mod should not support options around 
password setting ?
>
> Alternatively/optionally just set a CoS that enforces nsAccountLock to
> be set on all staged entries without having to explicitly set it ?
>
>> The only downside is that this would not be effective in older FreeIPA
>> versions, but AFAIR, we specified that if User Life Cycle is enabled, all
>> server should have at least 4.1 - otherwise for example deleted users would be
>> put to the special container or old servers would not have the appropriate DS
>> plugins updates.
> Yeah I do not see an issue with older servers, esp if we do not allow
> credentials on the entry anyway.
>
> Simo.
>