Hi BTRFS folks:
In my organization, many use cases exist for a time-based honoring
field for FS ACLs. I've done some brief research regarding this topic, but I
was unable to find any reference to such a thing in any file system.
I understand that a feature like time-based honoring for ACLs may
arguably be something that should exist in higher layers (E.G. some document
management system), but on the other hand, I see no real reason that an extra
ACL field that would allow for time-based granting/removing of permissions to
some user would be a problem.
* The logic would go something like this (ACE means Access control Entry):
If ACE.time = 0 or ACE.time > current_time; then
Honor ACE
Elif Ace.time < 0 and (current.time+ACE.time) > 0; then
Honor ACE
Else
not honor ACE
fi
for uses like company-wide file servers, etc, a little feature like
that could go very far in long-term management of file system permissions. You
could easily and non-hackeshly temporarily grant access to file system objects,
without having to makemodifications to applications, system utilities,or system
libraries. The behavior could be easily controled by mount options (could be
off by default) and a small utility or function of the standard file system's
utilities could allow for easy management of the value in the time fields
(change, expire, etc).
Of course, acurit time would then be crutial to system security, but
today acurit time is crytical on servers anyway in most situations. Besides,
it would definitly be an optional feature, enabled at the user's choice.
If we add a second field, then both expire time and activation time
could be set for a given access control entry at the same time. In that case,
negative values for the fields could indicate things like restrict access to
---, r-x, etc, regardless of the ACE's actual content. Basically, it would be
something like XFS's mask entry, but applying to the ACE itself not the entire
list.
Any thoughts, suggestions, ideas?
Am I just plain crazy?
Thanks for the great work you're doing.
David Bruzos (Systems Administrator)
2831 Talleyrand Ave.
Jacksonville, FL 32206
Office: (904) 357-3069
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