[jira] [Resolved] (NIFI-5973) NiFi: Add 'unix' or 'hadoop' user-group-provider

["Andy LoPresto (Jira)" <ji...@apache.org>]

     [ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/NIFI-5973?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:all-tabpanel ]

Andy LoPresto resolved NIFI-5973.
---------------------------------
    Resolution: Fixed

> NiFi: Add 'unix' or 'hadoop' user-group-provider
> ------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: NIFI-5973
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/NIFI-5973
>             Project: Apache NiFi
>          Issue Type: Improvement
>            Reporter: Sean Roberts
>            Assignee: Troy Melhase
>            Priority: Major
>              Labels: authentication, authorization, identity
>             Fix For: 1.10.0
>
>          Time Spent: 18h 10m
>  Remaining Estimate: 0h
>
> NiFi currently supports these group mappings:
> - File
> - LDAP
> Benefits of Unix or Hadoop based group identity:
> - File is now allowed any many environments as it's not integrated with the corporations identity system (typically AD or another LDAP).
> - LDAP adds a lot of complexity, overhead, and tons of up-front config per environment.
> - Most services, including those related to Hadoop, are moving to Unix based group lookups.
> How it works and some possible method to implement:
> - Linux users/groups come from the "Name Service Switch" (aka "nss").
> - Here are the Linux native commands to query it:
> -- show all users: `getent passwd`
> -- show specific user: `getent group %s`
> -- show all groups: `getent group`
> -- show specific group: `getent group %s`
> - hadoop-common has it's own libraries for accessing `nss`. Example of Knox's implementation: https://github.com/apache/knox/blob/master/gateway-provider-identity-assertion-hadoop-groups/src/main/java/org/apache/knox/gateway/identityasserter/hadoop/groups/filter/HadoopGroupProviderFilter.java
> - ranger usersync calls `getent` directly: https://github.com/apache/ranger/blob/da29d1929a54b2b579a74da32e5ea074d0f8e15d/ugsync/src/main/java/org/apache/ranger/unixusersync/process/UnixUserGroupBuilder.java#L49-L51
> - there are modules in most programming languages to access `nss`.
> Advantages of this method:
> - ability to get users/groups from multiple LDAP directories. _(very common requirement)_
> - little to no configuration: There is nothing customer or cluster specific to configure. (i.e. it "just works" with the default configs).
> - ease of change: if all services use this approach, you don't have to update dozens of services every time LDAP changes.
> - a lot less overhead: The OS has the users/groups. All of the services running the OS simply check locally for users/groups. Spares the LDAP servers and our machines from doing all the lookups.
> - group names are guaranteed to be consistent across services.
> - as this is becoming the standard in Knox, it makes KnoxSSO more stable.
> - less concern about LDAP credentials all over the place.
> - easier to pass security/compliance tests since we are utilising the customers existing identity infrastructure.



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