proxmox-backup/docs/user-management.rst

.. _user_mgmt:

User Management
===============


User Configuration
------------------

.. image:: images/screenshots/pbs-gui-user-management.png
  :align: right
  :alt: User management

Proxmox Backup Server supports several authentication realms, and you need to
choose the realm when you add a new user. Possible realms are:

:pam: Linux PAM standard authentication. Use this if you want to
      authenticate as Linux system user (Users need to exist on the
      system).

:pbs: Proxmox Backup Server realm. This type stores hashed passwords in
      ``/etc/proxmox-backup/shadow.json``.

After installation, there is a single user ``root@pam``, which
corresponds to the Unix superuser. User configuration information is stored in the file
``/etc/proxmox-backup/user.cfg``. You can use the
``proxmox-backup-manager`` command line tool to list or manipulate
users:

.. code-block:: console

  # proxmox-backup-manager user list
  ┌─────────────┬────────┬────────┬───────────┬──────────┬────────────────┬────────────────────┐
  │ userid      │ enable │ expire │ firstname │ lastname │ email          │ comment            │
  ╞═════════════╪════════╪════════╪═══════════╪══════════╪════════════════╪════════════════════╡
  │ root@pam    │      1 │        │           │          │                │ Superuser          │
  └─────────────┴────────┴────────┴───────────┴──────────┴────────────────┴────────────────────┘

.. image:: images/screenshots/pbs-gui-user-management-add-user.png
  :align: right
  :alt: Add a new user

The superuser has full administration rights on everything, so you
normally want to add other users with less privileges. You can create a new
user with the ``user create`` subcommand or through the web interface, under
**Configuration -> User Management**. The ``create`` subcommand lets you specify
many options like ``--email`` or ``--password``. You can update or change any
user properties using the ``update`` subcommand later (**Edit** in the GUI):


.. code-block:: console

  # proxmox-backup-manager user create john@pbs --email john@example.com
  # proxmox-backup-manager user update john@pbs --firstname John --lastname Smith
  # proxmox-backup-manager user update john@pbs --comment "An example user."

.. todo:: Mention how to set password without passing plaintext password as cli argument.


The resulting user list looks like this:

.. code-block:: console

  # proxmox-backup-manager user list
  ┌──────────┬────────┬────────┬───────────┬──────────┬──────────────────┬──────────────────┐
  │ userid   │ enable │ expire │ firstname │ lastname │ email            │ comment          │
  ╞══════════╪════════╪════════╪═══════════╪══════════╪══════════════════╪══════════════════╡
  │ john@pbs │      1 │        │ John      │ Smith    │ john@example.com │ An example user. │
  ├──────────┼────────┼────────┼───────────┼──────────┼──────────────────┼──────────────────┤
  │ root@pam │      1 │        │           │          │                  │ Superuser        │
  └──────────┴────────┴────────┴───────────┴──────────┴──────────────────┴──────────────────┘

Newly created users do not have any permissions. Please read the Access Control
section to learn how to set access permissions.

If you want to disable a user account, you can do that by setting ``--enable`` to ``0``

.. code-block:: console

  # proxmox-backup-manager user update john@pbs --enable 0

Or completely remove the user with:

.. code-block:: console

  # proxmox-backup-manager user remove john@pbs

.. _user_tokens:

API Tokens
----------

Any authenticated user can generate API tokens which can in turn be used to
configure various clients, instead of directly providing the username and
password.

API tokens serve two purposes:

#. Easy revocation in case client gets compromised
#. Limit permissions for each client/token within the users' permission

An API token consists of two parts: an identifier consisting of the user name,
the realm and a tokenname (``user@realm!tokenname``), and a secret value. Both
need to be provided to the client in place of the user ID (``user@realm``) and
the user password, respectively.

The API token is passed from the client to the server by setting the
``Authorization`` HTTP header with method ``PBSAPIToken`` to the value
``TOKENID:TOKENSECRET``.

Generating new tokens can done using ``proxmox-backup-manager`` or the GUI:

.. code-block:: console

  # proxmox-backup-manager user generate-token john@pbs client1
  Result: {
    "tokenid": "john@pbs!client1",
    "value": "d63e505a-e3ec-449a-9bc7-1da610d4ccde"
  }

.. note:: The displayed secret value needs to be saved, since it cannot be
  displayed again after generating the API token.

The ``user list-tokens`` sub-command can be used to display tokens and their
metadata:

.. code-block:: console

  # proxmox-backup-manager user list-tokens john@pbs
  ┌──────────────────┬────────┬────────┬─────────┐
  │ tokenid          │ enable │ expire │ comment │
  ╞══════════════════╪════════╪════════╪═════════╡
  │ john@pbs!client1 │      1 │        │         │
  └──────────────────┴────────┴────────┴─────────┘

Similarly, the ``user delete-token`` subcommand can be used to delete a token
again.

Newly generated API tokens don't have any permissions. Please read the next
section to learn how to set access permissions.


.. _user_acl:

Access Control
--------------

By default new users and API tokens do not have any permission. Instead you
need to specify what is allowed and what is not. You can do this by assigning
roles to users/tokens on specific objects like datastores or remotes. The
following roles exist:

**NoAccess**
  Disable Access - nothing is allowed.

**Admin**
  Can do anything.

**Audit**
  Can view things, but is not allowed to change settings.

**DatastoreAdmin**
  Can do anything on datastores.

**DatastoreAudit**
  Can view datastore settings and list content. But
  is not allowed to read the actual data.

**DatastoreReader**
  Can Inspect datastore content and can do restores.

**DatastoreBackup**
  Can backup and restore owned backups.

**DatastorePowerUser**
  Can backup, restore, and prune owned backups.

**RemoteAdmin**
  Can do anything on remotes.

**RemoteAudit**
  Can view remote settings.

**RemoteSyncOperator**
  Is allowed to read data from a remote.

.. image:: images/screenshots/pbs-gui-permissions-add.png
  :align: right
  :alt: Add permissions for user

Access permission information is stored in ``/etc/proxmox-backup/acl.cfg``. The
file contains 5 fields, separated using a colon (':') as a delimiter. A typical
entry takes the form:

``acl:1:/datastore:john@pbs:DatastoreBackup``

The data represented in each field is as follows:

#. ``acl`` identifier
#. A ``1`` or ``0``, representing whether propagation is enabled or disabled,
   respectively
#. The object on which the permission is set. This can be a specific object
   (single datastore, remote, etc.) or a top level object, which with
   propagation enabled, represents all children of the object also.
#. The user(s)/token(s) for which the permission is set
#. The role being set

You can manage permissions via **Configuration -> Access Control ->
Permissions** in the web interface. Likewise, you can use the ``acl``
subcommand to manage and monitor user permissions from the command line. For
example, the command below will add the user ``john@pbs`` as a
**DatastoreAdmin** for the datastore ``store1``, located at
``/backup/disk1/store1``:

.. code-block:: console

  # proxmox-backup-manager acl update /datastore/store1 DatastoreAdmin --auth-id john@pbs

You can list the ACLs of each user/token using the following command:

.. code-block:: console

   # proxmox-backup-manager acl list
   ┌──────────┬──────────────────┬───────────┬────────────────┐
   │ ugid     │ path             │ propagate │ roleid         │
   ╞══════════╪══════════════════╪═══════════╪════════════════╡
   │ john@pbs │ /datastore/disk1 │         1 │ DatastoreAdmin │
   └──────────┴──────────────────┴───────────┴────────────────┘

A single user/token can be assigned multiple permission sets for different datastores.

.. Note::
  Naming convention is important here. For datastores on the host,
  you must use the convention ``/datastore/{storename}``. For example, to set
  permissions for a datastore mounted at ``/mnt/backup/disk4/store2``, you would use
  ``/datastore/store2`` for the path. For remote stores, use the convention
  ``/remote/{remote}/{storename}``, where ``{remote}`` signifies the name of the
  remote (see `Remote` below) and ``{storename}`` is the name of the datastore on
  the remote.

API Token permissions
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

API token permissions are calculated based on ACLs containing their ID
independent of those of their corresponding user. The resulting permission set
on a given path is then intersected with that of the corresponding user.

In practice this means:

#. API tokens require their own ACL entries
#. API tokens can never do more than their corresponding user

Effective permissions
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To calculate and display the effective permission set of a user or API token
you can use the ``proxmox-backup-manager user permission`` command:

.. code-block:: console

  # proxmox-backup-manager user permissions john@pbs -- path /datastore/store1
  Privileges with (*) have the propagate flag set
  
  Path: /datastore/store1
  - Datastore.Audit (*)
  - Datastore.Backup (*)
  - Datastore.Modify (*)
  - Datastore.Prune (*)
  - Datastore.Read (*)
  
  # proxmox-backup-manager acl update /datastore/store1 DatastoreBackup --auth-id 'john@pbs!client1'
  # proxmox-backup-manager user permissions 'john@pbs!test' -- path /datastore/store1
  Privileges with (*) have the propagate flag set
  
  Path: /datastore/store1
  - Datastore.Backup (*)