path: root/README

                           wallet release 0.10
                     (secure data management system)

                Written by Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>

  Copyright 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Board of Trustees, Leland
  Stanford Jr. University.  This software is distributed under a BSD-style
  license.  Please see the file LICENSE in the distribution for more
  information.

  This software is beta-quality and should be treated with caution.  It is
  currently being tested for production deployment at Stanford.

BLURB

  The wallet is a system for managing secure data, authorization rules to
  retrieve or change that data, and audit rules for documenting actions
  taken on that data.  Objects of various types may be stored in the
  wallet or generated on request and retrieved by authorized users.  The
  wallet tracks ACLs, metadata, and trace information.  It is built on top
  of the remctl protocol and uses Kerberos GSS-API authentication.  One of
  the object types it supports is Kerberos keytabs, making it suitable as
  a user-accessible front-end to Kerberos kadmind with richer ACL and
  metadata operations.

DESCRIPTION

  The wallet is a client/server system using a central server with a
  supporting database and a stand-alone client that can be widely
  distributed to users.  The server runs on a secure host with access to a
  local database; tracks object metadata such as ACLs, attributes,
  history, expiration, and ownership; and has the necessary access
  privileges to create wallet-managed objects in external systems (such as
  Kerberos service principals).  The client uses the remctl protocol to
  send commands to the server, store and retrieve objects, and query
  object metadata.  The same client can be used for both regular user
  operations and wallet administrative actions.

  All wallet actions are controlled by a fine-grained set of ACLs.  Each
  object has an owner ACL and optional get, store, show, destroy, and
  flags ACLs that control more specific actions.  A global administrative
  ACL controls access to administrative actions.  An ACL consists of zero
  or more entries, each of which is a generic scheme and identifier pair,
  allowing the ACL system to be extended to use any existing authorization
  infrastructure.  Currently, the only ACL type supported matches a single
  Kerberos principal name, but this will be extended in future releases.

  Currently, the object types supported are simple files and Kerberos
  keytabs.  By default, whenever a Kerberos keytab object is retrieved
  from the wallet, the key is changed in the Kerberos KDC and the wallet
  returns a keytab for the new key.  However, a keytab object can also be
  configured to preserve the existing keys when retrieved.  Included in
  the wallet distribution is a script that can be run via remctl on an MIT
  Kerberos KDC to extract the existing key for a principal, and the wallet
  system will use that interface to retrieve the current key if the
  unchanging flag is set on a Kerberos keytab object for MIT Kerberos.
  (Heimdal doesn't require any special support.)

REQUIREMENTS

  The wallet client is written in C and builds against the C remctl
  libraries.  You will have to install the remctl client libraries in
  order to build it.  remctl can be obtained from:

      http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/remctl/

  The wallet client will build with either MIT Kerberos or Heimdal.

  The wallet server is written in Perl and requires Perl 5.6.0 or later.
  It uses the Perl DBI layer to talk to a database, and therefore the DBI
  module and a DBD module for the database it will use must be installed.
  Currently, the server has only been tested against SQLite 3 and MySQL 5
  and will probably not work fully with other database backends.  Porting
  is welcome.

  The wallet server is intended to be run under remctld and use remctld to
  do authentication.  It can be ported to any other front-end, but doing
  so will require writing a new version of server/wallet-backend that
  translates the actions in that protocol into calls to the Wallet::Server
  Perl object.

  The file object support in the wallet server requires the Digest::MD5
  Perl module, which comes with recent versions of Perl and is available
  on CPAN for older versions.

  The keytab support in the wallet server supports either Heimdal or MIT
  Kerberos KDCs.  The Heimdal support requires the Heimdal::Kadm5 Perl
  module.  The MIT Kerberos support requires the MIT Kerberos kadmin
  client program be installed.  In either case, wallet also requires that
  the wallet server have a keytab for a principal with appropriate access
  to create, modify, and delete principals from the KDC (as configured in
  kadm5.acl on an MIT Kerberos KDC).

  To support the unchanging flag on keytab objects with an MIT Kerberos
  KDC, the Net::Remctl Perl module (shipped with remctl) must be installed
  on the server and the keytab-backend script must be runnable via remctl
  on the KDC.  This script also requires an MIT Kerberos kadmin.local
  binary that supports the -norandkey option to ktadd.  This option is
  included in MIT Kerberos 1.7 and later.

  To support the NetDB ACL verifier (only of interest at sites using NetDB
  to manage DNS), the Net::Remctl Perl module must be installed on the
  server.

  To run the test suite, you must have Perl 5.8 or later and the Perl DBI
  module installed.  You will also need a DBD module installed for the
  database backend you want to use (currently, either DBD::SQLite or
  DBD::mysql).  The other modules are available from CPAN and may be
  available as part of your OS (many Linux distributions have them as
  packages, for example).

  To run the full test suite, additionally all of the above software
  requirements must be met.  Tests requiring some bit of software that's
  not installed should be skipped, but not all the permutations have been
  checked.  The full test suite also requires the Test::Pod Perl module
  (available from CPAN), that remctld be installed and available on the
  user's path or in /usr/local/sbin or /usr/sbin, that test cases can run
  services on and connect to port 14373 on 127.0.0.1, and that kinit and
  either kvno or kgetcred (which come with Kerberos) be installed and
  available on the user's path.  The full test suite also requires a local
  keytab and some additional configuration.

  To bootstrap from a Git checkout, or if you change the Automake files
  and need to regenerate Makefile.in, you will need Automake 1.11 or
  later.  For bootstrap or if you change configure.ac or any of the m4
  files it includes and need to regenerate configure or config.h.in, you
  will need Autoconf 2.64 or later.

BUILD AND INSTALLATION

  You can build and install wallet with the standard commands:

      ./configure
      make
      make install

  Pass --enable-silent-rules to configure for a quieter build (similar to
  the Linux kernel).  Use make warnings instead of make to build with full
  GCC compiler warnings (requires a relatively current version of GCC).

  The last step will probably have to be done as root.  Currently, this
  always installs both the client and the server.

  You can pass the --with-wallet-server and --with-wallet-port options to
  configure to compile in a default wallet server and port.  If no port is
  set, the remctl default port is used.  If no server is set, the server
  must be specified either in krb5.conf configuration or on the wallet
  command line or the client will exit with an error.

  By default, wallet installs itself under /usr/local except for the
  server Perl modules, which are installed into whatever default site
  module path is used by your Perl installation.  To change the
  installation location of the files other than the Perl modules, pass the
  --prefix=DIR argument to configure.  To change the Perl module
  installation location, you will need to run perl on Makefile.PL in the
  perl subdirectory of the build tree with appropriate options and rebuild
  the module after running make and before running make install.

  If remctl was installed in a path not normally searched by your
  compiler, you must specify its installation prefix to configure with the
  --with-remctl=DIR option, or alternately set the path to the include
  files and libraries separately with --with-remctl-include=DIR and
  --with-remctl-lib=DIR.

  Normally, configure will use krb5-config to determine the flags to use
  to compile with your Kerberos libraries.  If krb5-config isn't found, it
  will look for the standard Kerberos libraries in locations already
  searched by your compiler.  If the the krb5-config script first in your
  path is not the one corresponding to the Kerberos libraries you want to
  use or if your Kerberos libraries and includes aren't in a location
  searched by default by your compiler, you need to specify
  --with-krb5=PATH and --with-gssapi=PATH:

      ./configure --with-krb5=/usr/pubsw --with-gssapi=/usr/pubsw

  You can also individually set the paths to the include directory and the
  library directory with --with-krb5-include, --with-krb5-lib,
  --with-gssapi-include, and --with-gssapi-lib.  You may need to do this
  if Autoconf can't figure out whether to use lib, lib32, or lib64 on your
  platform.  Note that these settings aren't used if a krb5-config script
  is found.

  To specify a particular krb5-config script to use, either set the
  KRB5_CONFIG environment variable or pass it to configure like:

      ./configure KRB5_CONFIG=/path/to/krb5-config

  To not use krb5-config and force library probing even if there is a
  krb5-config script on your path, set KRB5_CONFIG to a nonexistent path:

      ./configure KRB5_CONFIG=/nonexistent

  You can build wallet in a different directory from the source if you
  wish.  To do this, create a new empty directory, cd to that directory,
  and then give the path to configure when running configure.  Everything
  else should work as above.

  You can pass the --enable-reduced-depends flag to configure to try to
  minimize the shared library dependencies encoded in the binaries.  This
  omits from the link line all the libraries included solely because the
  Kerberos libraries depend on them and instead links the programs only
  against libraries whose APIs are called directly.  This will only work
  with shared Kerberos libraries and will only work on platforms where
  shared libraries properly encode their own dependencies (such as Linux).
  It is intended primarily for building packages for Linux distributions
  to avoid encoding unnecessary shared library dependencies that make
  shared library migrations more difficult.  If none of the above made any
  sense to you, don't bother with this flag.

TESTING

  The wallet system comes with an extensive test suite which you can run
  with:

      make check

  In order to test the client in a meaningful way and test the keytab
  support in the server, however, you will need to do some preparatory
  work before running the test suite.  Review the files:

      tests/data/README
      perl/t/data/README

  and follow the instructions in those files to enable the full test
  suite.

  The test suite also requires some additional software be installed that
  isn't otherwise used by the wallet.  See REQUIREMENTS above for the full
  list of requirements for the test suite.  The test driver attempts to
  selectively skip those tests for which the necessary configuration is
  not available, but this has not yet been fully tested in all of its
  possible permutations.

  If a test fails, you can run a single test with verbose output via:

      tests/runtests -o <name-of-test>

  Do this instead of running the test program directly since it will
  ensure that necessary environment variables are set up.

CONFIGURATION

  For the basic setup and configuration of the wallet server, see the file
  docs/setup in the source distribution.  You will need to set up a
  database on the server (unless you're using SQLite), initialize the
  database, install remctld and the wallet Perl modules, and set up
  remctld to run the wallet-backend program.

  Before setting up the wallet server, review the Wallet::Config
  docuemntation (with man Wallet::Config or perldoc Wallet::Config).
  There are many customization options, some of which must be set.  You
  may also need to create a Kerberos keytab for the keytab object backend
  and give it appropriate ACLs, and set up keytab-backend and its remctld
  configuration on your KDC if you want unchanging flag support.

  The wallet client supports reading configuration settings from the
  system krb5.conf file.  For more information, see the CONFIGURATION
  section of the wallet client man page (man wallet).

THANKS

  To Roland Schemers for the original idea that kicked off this project
  and for the original implementation of the leland_srvtab system, which
  was its primary inspiration.

  To Anton Ushakov for his prior work on Kerberos v5 synchronization and
  his enhancements to kasetkey to read a key from an existing srvtab.

  To Jeffrey Hutzelman for his review of the original wallet design and
  multiple useful discussions about what actions and configurations the
  wallet would need to support to be useful outside of Stanford.

  To Huaqing Zheng, Paul Pavelko, David Hoffman, and Paul Keser for their
  reviews of the wallet system design and comments on design decisions and
  security models.

  To Jon Robertson for the refactoring of Wallet::Kadmin, Heimdal support,
  and many of the wallet server-side reports.