[Nut-upsdev] [nut-Feature Requests][310492] Allow to specify hostnames in ACL (upsd.conf)

[Arjen de Korte]

[...]

> seconded for the ACL. A comment about security should also be added
> somewhere in the installation doc (for the doc rewrite).

Shall I go ahead and remove the ACL mechanism from the server? And at the
same time, change the default LISTEN address to 127.0.0.1 and/or ::1 if
none is specified?

You're right about the need for a hint on how the server should be
secured. Both the need for a firewall and properly specifying the LISTEN
directive are underdocumented at the moment. I'll see what I can do in
this area, this is desireable even without the above changes.

> I'm also thinking about simplifying the users definition. Though the
> problematic is harder to solve there (PAM + access level
> (monitoring/RO or RW/commands). But I've never got time to dig this
> part. Any thought?

I doubt that this will make the configuration easier. When it comes to
specifying *which* users (username:password) are allowed, it might come in
handy. But I don't think we can properly manage the RO/monitoring/slave
and RW/commands/master through PAM. So instead of handling this all in one
file, would mean that you'd have to configure this in two places. That
doesn't really help to make it easier.

An alternative could be to grant RO/monitoring/slave universally (without
access control) and only require setting up an administrative user for
RW/commands/master access. If you'd be running both 'upsd' and 'upsmon' on
the same box, we could even opt to use a file socket for that, which would
not require any access control (other than that the user running 'upsmon'
should have RW access to that socket). It would need no further
authentication at all. In cases where this suits ones needs (almost
always), 'upsd.users' would not be required anymore.

Best regards, Arjen