path: root/docs/stanford-naming

              Stanford University Wallet Naming Conventions

Introduction

    These are the naming conventions used at Stanford University for
    wallet objects.  They may not be appropriate for every site using
    wallet, but they can serve as a starting point for your site-local
    conventions.  They are the conventions enforced by
    examples/stanford.conf (to the extent it's possible to enforce them).

Object Naming

  Keytab

    Keytab object names correspond to the principal names in your Kerberos
    database, so there's no need for a wallet-specific set of naming
    conventions.  Apply whatever conventions you apply to the names of
    service principals in your KDC.

    If you do not already have naming standards for service principals,
    you may want to develop some as part of your wallet deployment.  We
    use the following:

    * Per user principals for doing automated things related to an
      individual user account are named as instances of the corresponding
      user principal.  For example, we manage CGI instances for users with
      CGI service in the wallet and run CGI scripts with Kerberos tickets
      and AFS tokens for that principal.  If my account is rra, the CGI
      instance is rra/cgi.

    * Service principals for campus departments and groups are handled
      similarly but start with dept- or group- prefixes respectively.  If
      there is a campus department named ITS, its CGI instance is
      dept-its/cgi.

    * Class principals start with class-, then the class code, the section
      if relevant, and then the PeopleSoft quarter.  So the class aa100,
      section 01, in fall quarter of 2008 has a CGI principal named
      class-aa100-01-1082/cgi.

    * Host-based principals follow the standard naming convention in
      Kerberos: service, followed by a slash, followed by the
      fully-qualified hostname in all lowercase.  For example, the webauth
      service on windlord.stanford.edu is webauth/windlord.stanford.edu.
      It's very useful to have wallet enforce fully-qualifying the
      hostname and giving the hostname in all lowercase, since both are
      common errors.

    * Other, non-host-based principals that aren't tied to a particular
      account and aren't CGI principals for a group, department, or class
      have names like service/<service-name> where <service-name> is a
      relatively short description of the service that ideally includes
      some indication of the responsible department where appropriate.  We
      use - rather than _ as a separator between components of
      <service-name>.

  File

    File objects pose the most significant challenge to naming since they
    can contain just about anything.  We require some discussion before
    putting a new type of data into a wallet file object, both to see if
    it should get its own object type first and to agree on a naming
    convention for that type of thing.

    There are two basic types of file objects: ones that are tied to a
    particular system, and ones that are not.  For the ones that are tied
    to a particular system, we use a naming convention very similar to
    host-based Kerberos principals so that we can set up default ACLs
    based on the host.  For ones that are not, we require an indication of
    the repsonsible group in each file object, since the rest of the name
    can often be ambiguous.

    File objects are named with two or more slash-separated components
    (again, similar to Kerberos principals).  The first is the type of
    file being stored.  The rest vary based on the file type.

    We previously instead used <group>-<server>-<type>, but that caused
    various problems in parsing because groups, servers, and types all
    also contained dashes.  Slashes are much less ambiguous.  This
    document shows both the new and the old form.

    Host-based:

    htpasswd/<server>/<app>

        An .htpasswd file for HTTP Basic Authentication for special-case
        web configurations that require such a thing.  <server> is the
        server (or group of servers) on which the file will be stored

        (OLD: <group>-<server>-htpasswd-<app>)

    password-ipmi/<server>

        Stores the password for remote IPMI/iLO/ILOM access to the
        system.

        (OLD: <group>-<server>-password-ipmi)

    password-root/<server>

        Stores the root password for a given server.

        (OLD: <group>-<server>-password-root)

    password-tivoli/<server>

        Stores the Tivoli TSM backup password for a given server.  See
        also tivoli-key/<server>, but depending on what one wants to do
        with the password, this may be a better representation.

        (OLD: <group>-<server>-password-tivoli)

    ssh-<type>/<server>

        Stores the SSH private key for <server>.  For shared private keys
        across a pool, <server> should be the name of the pool, or
        possibly some unambiguous name for the set of systems.  <type> is
        the type of SSH key (rsa or dsa, in lowercase).

        (OLD: <group>-<server>-ssh-<type>)

    ssl-key/<server>[/<application>]

        Stores the SSL X.509 certificate private key for <server>.  Used
        for Apache, Postfix, LDAP, and similar cases where the certificate
        should match the host name.  The public certificate we manage
        external to wallet since it doesn't need to be protected or
        encrypted.  <server> here should be the CN of the certificate,
        which may be different than the hostname (for hosts with multiple
        virtual hosts, for example, or because the certificate is for a
        load-balanced name).

        An optional <application> component may be added if there are
        multiple certificates with the same host name as the CN but with
        different private keys.  (This may happen if, for example,
        multiple services are running on the same FQDN but should have
        isolated security contexts.)

        Use ssl-key/starYYYY.stanford.edu for the key for the
        *.stanford.edu certificate, where YYYY is the expiration year.

        (OLD: <group>-<server>-ssl-key)

    ssl-keypair/<server>[/<application>]

        Same as ssl-key except that the signed certificate is included in
        the same file as the private key.  This is used for convenience
        with some applications that want to have both the signed
        certificate and private key in the same file.

        The meaning of <server> and <application> are the same as for
        ssl-key.

    tivoli-key/<server>

        The Tivoli password or backup encryption key for this server.
        Both the password and the encryption key, if used, are stored in
        the same file, so both are stored together.  This file is found at
        /etc/adsm/TSM.PWD.

        (OLD: <group>-<server>-tivoli-key)

    In all cases, <server> should be a fully-qualified domain name in the
    new naming convention.  In the old naming convention, .stanford.edu
    was omitted, but this adds unnecessary ambiguity.

    Service-based:

    config/<group>/<service>/<name>

        A configuration file named <name> that contains some secure
        information, such as a database password.  Ideally, the secure
        data should be stored in a separate file and assembled into the
        configuration file.  This is reserved for configuration files that
        hold nothing but authentication information.  Only use this naming
        convention if there is not a more specific one below.

        (OLD: <group>-<service>-config-<name>)

    db/<group>/<service>/<database>

        Stores the database password for <service> access to the database
        named <database>.  This may be a file containing only the database
        password or a Perl AppConfig configuration file with the database
        connection information including the password.

        (OLD: <group>-<service>-db-<database>)

    gpg-key/<group>/<service>

        Stores the GnuPG private key for a service that needs to do GnuPG
        signing or encryption.

        (OLD: <group>-<service>-gpg-key)

    password/<group>/<service>/<name>

        A password for some account, service, keystore, or something
        similar that is not covered by one of the more specific naming
        conventions, such as a password used to connect to a remote ssh
        service.  <service> is the service that uses this password and
        <name> is the thing the password is used for (such as the remote
        account name).  This may be a file containing only the password,
        or a configuration file of some type that includes a field name
        and the password.  (However, use the db type described above for
        database passwords.)

        (OLD: <group>-<server>-password-<account>)

    properties/<group>/<service>[/<name>]

        The properties file for a Java application that contains some
        secure data (such as SSL key passwords or database passwords).
        This should only be used for a properties file that contains only
        the password and closely-related information, such as database
        connection information.  For anything else, switch to storing the
        password separately using the password type above and building the
        properties file dynamically from the password and a template.  The
        optional <name> component is for when there are multiple files
        stored for a particular service.

        (OLD: <group>-<service>-properties)

    ssl-keystore/<group>/<service>[/<name>]

        The Java keystore file (containing both public and private key)
        used by a service for authentication to other services.  If a
        given service uses more than one, use the optional <name>
        component to distinguish.

        (OLD: <group>-<service>-ssl-keystore)

    ssl-pkcs12/<group>/<service>[/<name>]

        The PKCS#12 file (containing both public and private key) used by
        a service for authentication to other services.  If a given
        service uses more than one, use the optional <name> component to
        distinguish.

        (OLD: <group>-<service>-ssl-pkcs12)

    If there are separate objects for different tiers, <service> should be
    left unqualified for production and be qualified with a dash and the
    tier for non-production.  For example, ssl-keystore/idg/accounts would
    be the production keystore for the Accounts application, and
    ssl-keystore/idg/accounts-uat would be the keystore for the UAT
    version.

    We previously stored a wider variety of configuration files before
    developing a way to dynamically substitute the password into a larger
    configuration file during deployment.  The following file types are
    obsolete and should no longer be used; instead, the configuration file
    should be constructed by substituting a password (usually stored as a
    password or db type) into the configuration file.

    Obsolete:

    <group>-<server>-pam-<app>
    <group>-<service>-puppetconf
    <group>-<service>-shibboleth

ACL Naming

    Currently, there is no naming enforcement for ACLs, so ACL naming has
    to be done purely by policy.  In a later version of wallet, there will
    be support for enforcing ACL naming conventions.

    We use the following conventions:

    host/<host>

        Any object that should be downloadable by either any administrator
        of <host> or by the host key itself.  An ACL named like this
        should have as its contents either:

            netdb example.stanford.edu
            krb5 host/example.stanford.edu@stanford.edu

        or:

            netdb-root example.stanford.edu
            krb5 host/example.stanford.edu@stanford.edu

        Don't use this ACL name for ACLs with other content.  Instead, use
        one of the other ones below.

    group/*

        Groups of users.  Each ACL line should probably have a scheme of
        krb5 and an identifier of a Kerberos principal (which must include
        the @stanford.edu portion).  Eventually, wallet will support using
        PTS groups and Workgroup Manager groups, but for right now this is
        how groups are supported.

    user/<username>

        A keytab that's only downloadable by one particular person.
        Double-check that a host/<host> ACL or a group/* ACL wouldn't be
        more correct.  If this is what's desired, it would have a single
        line of scheme krb5 and identifier equal to the user's full
        Kerberos principal.

    service/<service>

        Used for keytabs that should be downloadable by a service, as
        opposed to a group of people.  Usually this ACL will have lines
        like krb5 service/<service>@stanford.edu to let the service
        principal download other associated keytabs, but it may contain
        other things as well, including administrators for that service so
        that they can bootstrap or test.  This naming convention should
        also be used for ACLs that allow multiple hosts to download the
        same object, such as:

            netdb-root example.stanford.edu
            krb5 host/example.stanford.edu@stanford.edu
            netdb-root example-dev.stanford.edu
            krb5 host/example-dev.stanford.edu@stanford.edu

        Such an ACL would normally be named service/example.

License

    Copyright 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013
        The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University

    Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
    are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
    notice and this notice are preserved.  This file is offered as-is,
    without any warranty.