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Posted to dev@subversion.apache.org by "C. Michael Pilato" <cm...@collab.net> on 2009/07/30 17:59:39 UTC

WARNING: Upcoming authn/authz policy change for svn.collab.net

C. Michael Pilato wrote:
> I'm contemplating a relatively minor change of authn/authz policy for
> svn.collab.net.  Specifically, I'd like to make two changes:
> 
> 1.  Allow authenticated repository access only over SSL connections, and
> anonymous repository access only over non-SSL connections.  This means we
> can stop using throw-away passwords for this server.
> 
> 2.  Unify the password files on the server into one.  Some of our
> repositories already only allow SSL access (because we keep more sensitive
> data there), so we have a separate htpasswd file for those where folks
> currently put better passwords.  But maintaining those files isn't as
> routine and automated as managing our regular svn commit access files, even
> though there are patterns we could employ to accomplish this.  But why have
> patterns when you can technically guarantee the results you want?
> 
> Overall, this should greatly simplify things over the status quo, which offers:
> 
> - for one repos, anonymous read / authenticated write / no path-based authz
> / SSL or non-SSL
> 
> - for another repos, anonymous read / authenticated read+write / path-basd
> authz / SSL or non-SSL
> 
> - for a third repos, authenticated read+write, SSL-only
> 
> Confused yet?  Yeah.
> 
> The only downside I can think of here is that committers will require
> SSL-enabled Subversion clients.  While this might not be a problem for most
> of us, it's not clear to me how that affects our casual users (translators,
> contrib maintainers, etc.)
> 
> Thoughts?

By now, I really should know better than to just leave discussions of this
sort open.  So I've tweaked the Subject line, and I'm amending the above to
include, "Unless I get strong objections in the next couple of days, I'll be
making this change."

-- 
C. Michael Pilato <cm...@collab.net>
CollabNet   <>   www.collab.net   <>   Distributed Development On Demand

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Re: WARNING: Upcoming authn/authz policy change for svn.collab.net

Posted by "C. Michael Pilato" <cm...@collab.net>.
C. Michael Pilato wrote:
> Around 10pm or 11pm tonight (U.S. Eastern time), I'm going to take
> svn.collab.net offline for a bit to make these authn/authz simplifications
> I've been talking about.  Here's the updated plan:
> 
>    * There will be a single password file for all repositories on this box.
>      When merging password files, any password clashes for a given username
>      will be resolved such that the password used for the most secure
>      repository will win.
> 
>    * Non-SSL access to repositories and ViewVC will be anonymous only.  No
>      more authentication for non-SSL access, period.
> 
>    * SSL access will have the same authentication requirements as currently
>      exist, with one notable exception:  today we have both '/repos/svn-org'
>      and '/repos/svn-org-no-anon' locations, required because of
>      http://blogs.open.collab.net/svn/2007/03/authz_and_anon_.html .  In
>      the future, we'll still have two "locations" for this repository:  one
>      is "accessed via SSL, authn required" and the other is "accessed
>      without SSL, authn-free, without permission to see the private portions
>      of the repository."  Both of these will use the URI path /repos/svn-org
>      as expected.
> 

This work is done now.  Items of interest include:

* If you have an 'svn' repository working copy checked out without SSL and
you try to commit, you will get a MKACTIVITY error.  Why?  Because non-SSL
access is no longer authn-gated, so Apache sees no username, so you get no
commit.  'svn switch --relocate' is your friend.

* Here's the list of people whose 'svn' commit passwords were overwritten
with the password used for more sensitive repositories: rooneg, jrepenning,
 maxb, breser.

* As an added bonus, ViewVC can now be used to view all the repositories on
the system.  It's configured to honor the Subversion authz rules, anonymous
over non-SSL and authenticated over SSL.

Technically, we should probably update hacking.html and related docs to
recommend that developers check out http*S*://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/...

Finally, all these configuration changes were versioned, so if folks start
complaining, it should be pretty trivial to revert them all.


-- 
C. Michael Pilato <cm...@collab.net>
CollabNet   <>   www.collab.net   <>   Distributed Development On Demand

------------------------------------------------------
http://subversion.tigris.org/ds/viewMessage.do?dsForumId=462&dsMessageId=2382758

Re: WARNING: Upcoming authn/authz policy change for svn.collab.net

Posted by "C. Michael Pilato" <cm...@collab.net>.
Around 10pm or 11pm tonight (U.S. Eastern time), I'm going to take
svn.collab.net offline for a bit to make these authn/authz simplifications
I've been talking about.  Here's the updated plan:

   * There will be a single password file for all repositories on this box.
     When merging password files, any password clashes for a given username
     will be resolved such that the password used for the most secure
     repository will win.

   * Non-SSL access to repositories and ViewVC will be anonymous only.  No
     more authentication for non-SSL access, period.

   * SSL access will have the same authentication requirements as currently
     exist, with one notable exception:  today we have both '/repos/svn-org'
     and '/repos/svn-org-no-anon' locations, required because of
     http://blogs.open.collab.net/svn/2007/03/authz_and_anon_.html .  In
     the future, we'll still have two "locations" for this repository:  one
     is "accessed via SSL, authn required" and the other is "accessed
     without SSL, authn-free, without permission to see the private portions
     of the repository."  Both of these will use the URI path /repos/svn-org
     as expected.

-- 
C. Michael Pilato <cm...@collab.net>
CollabNet   <>   www.collab.net   <>   Distributed Development On Demand

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