.. _publisher-acl:

====================
Publisher ACL system
====================

The salt publisher ACL system is a means to allow system users other than root
to have access to execute select salt commands on minions from the master.

The publisher ACL system is configured in the master configuration file via the
``publisher_acl`` configuration option. Under the ``publisher_acl``
configuration option the users open to send commands are specified and then a
list of regular expressions which specify the minion functions which will be
made available to specified user. This configuration is much like the ``peer``
configuration:

.. code-block:: yaml

    publisher_acl:
      # Allow thatch to execute anything.
      thatch:
        - .*
      # Allow fred to use test and pkg, but only on "web*" minions.
      fred:
        - web*:
          - test.*
          - pkg.*
      # Allow managers to use saltutil module functions
      manager_.*:
        - saltutil.*

Permission Issues
-----------------
Directories required for ``publisher_acl`` must be modified to be readable by
the users specified:

.. code-block:: bash

    chmod 755 /var/cache/salt /var/cache/salt/master /var/cache/salt/master/jobs /var/run/salt /var/run/salt/master

.. note::

    In addition to the changes above you will also need to modify the
    permissions of /var/log/salt and the existing log file to be writable by
    the user(s) which will be running the commands. If you do not wish to do
    this then you must disable logging or Salt will generate errors as it
    cannot write to the logs as the system users.

If you are upgrading from earlier versions of salt you must also remove any
existing user keys and re-start the Salt master:

.. code-block:: bash

    rm /var/cache/salt/.*key
    service salt-master restart

Whitelist and Blacklist
-----------------------
Salt's authentication systems can be configured by specifying what is allowed
using a whitelist, or by specifying what is disallowed using a blacklist. If
you specify a whitelist, only specified operations are allowed. If you specify
a blacklist, all operations are allowed except those that are blacklisted.

See :conf_master:`publisher_acl` and :conf_master:`publisher_acl_blacklist`.
