[Lustre-devel] GSS cross-realm on MDT -> OST

[Eric Mei]

Peter Braam wrote:
> 
> 
> On 7/8/08 2:38 PM, "Benjamin Bennett" <ben at psc.edu> wrote:
> 
>> Peter Braam wrote:
>>> Hmm. Perhaps there are implementation issues here that overshadow the
>>> architecture.
>>>
>>> To interact with MDS nodes that are part of one file system, the MDS needs
>>> to be part of a realm.  The MDS performs authorization based on a principal
>>> to MDS (i.e. Lustre) user/group database.   Within one Lustre file system
>>> each MDS MUST HAVE the same user group database.  We will likely want to
>>> place MDS's distributedly in the longer term future, so take clear note of
>>> this: one Kerberos realm owns the entire MDS cluster for a file system.
>> Could you explain more on why this requires a single realm and not just
>> consistent mappings across all MDSs?
> 
> That MIGHT work ... But how would two domains guarantee consistent updates
> to the databases?  However, the server - server trust across domains we need
> is new to me (and I am not sure if/how it works).

Practically it's doable, of course. But as Peter pointed out the user 
database must be the same across all MDSs within a Luster FS. If 2 MDSs 
could share the user database, why bother putting them into different 
kerberos realms? So we assume all MDSs should be in a single realm. Does 
TeraGrid have different requirement?

>>> There can be multiple MDS clusters, i.e. Lustre file systems, in a single
>>> realm, each serving their own file system.  Each Lustre file system can have
>>> its own user/group database.  No restrictions here.
>> Well, that's the problem with multiple clusters in a single realm, lack
>> of restriction... ;-)
> 
> Restrict yourself, not me or Lustre :)
> 
>>> For a given file system the MDS nodes produce capabilities which the OSS
>>> nodes use for authorization.   It is important that the MDS can maken
>>> authenticated RPC's to the OSS nodes in its file system and for this we use
>>> Kerberos (this is not a "must have" - it could have been done with a
>>> different key sharing mechanism).
>> With multiple clusters in a single realm an MDS from any cluster could
>> authenticate and authorize as an MDS to an OSS in any cluster.
> 
> 
> 
> Good point.  If so that should be a bug.
> 
> ===> Eric Mei, what is the story here?

Yes Ben is right, currently in a same realm any MDS could authenticate 
with any MDS and OSS. But afaics the problem is nothing to do with 
Kerberos. It's because currently Lustre have no config information about 
the server cluster membership, each server target have no idea what 
other targets are.

So solve this, we can either place the configuration on each MDS/OST 
nodes - as Ben proposed in last mail; or probably better centrally 
managed by MGS, thus MDT/OST would be able to get uptodate server 
cluster information. Would it work?

> The key (which is manually generated) should authenticate an instance of an
> MDS, not a "cluster".   The only case where this might become delicate is if
> one MDS node is the server for two file systems.

GSS/Kerberos is for the a certain kind service on a node, we can tell it 
simply from the composition of Kerberos principal 
"service_name/hostname at REALM". As to Lustre, lustre_mds/hostname at REALM 
it's for MDS, not specific to MDT. So if two MDTs on a MDS serving two 
different file systems, GSS/Kerberos authentications are performed in 
the same way for them, further access control should be handled by each 
target (MDT/OST).

>>  This 
>> would allow an MDS in one cluster to change the key used for
>> capabilities on the OSSs in another cluster, no?
>>
>>> ==> So the first issue you have to become clear about is how you authorize
>>> an MDS to contact one of its OSS nodes, wherever these are place.
>> I've changed lsvcgssd on the OSSs to take an arbitrary number of '-M
>> lustre_mds/mdshost at REALM' and use this list to determine MDS
>> authorization.  Is there a way in which an OSS is already aware of its
>> appropriate MDSs?
> 
> As you pointed out, we need that, and Eric Mei should help you get that.

Yes that works, probably as temporary solution. As described above, 
currently OSS don't know that info. we may need a more complete 
centrally controlled server membership authentication, maybe independent 
of GSS/Kerberos.

>>> Similarly the Kerberos connections are used by the clients to connect to the
>>> OSS, but they are not used to authenticate anything (but optionally the
>>> node), they are used merely to provide privacy and/or authenticity for
>>> transporting data between the client and the OSS nodes.  With relatively
>>> little effort this could be done without Kerberos at all, on the other hand,
>>> probably using Kerberos for this leads to a more easily understood
>>> architecture.
>>>
>>> So, to repeat,  the authorization uses capabilities, which authenticate the
>>> requestor and contain authorization information, independent of a server
>>> user/group database on the OSS.
>>>
>>> ==> The second issue you need to be clear about is how you authenticate
>>> client NODES (NOT users) to OSS nodes.
>> Client nodes are issued lustre_root/host credentials from their local
>> realm.  This works just fine for Client -> OST since the only
>> [kerberos-related] authorization check is a "lustre_root" service part.
> 
> Good.  Does it work across realms, because it seems we need that in any
> case?

Yes, Ben had a patch to make it work.

> BTW, thank you for trying this all out in detail, that is very helpful.
> Perhaps Sheila could talk with you and Eric Mei and get a nice writeup done
> for the manual.

-- 
Eric