Chapter 22. Ensuring the presence of host-based access control rules in IdM using Ansible playbooks


Configure HBAC rules using Ansible to control which users can access specific Identity Management (IdM) hosts and services based on their group memberships.

22.1. Host-based access control rules in IdM

Host-based access control (HBAC) rules define which users or user groups can access which hosts or host groups by using which services or services in a service group. As a system administrator, you can use HBAC rules to achieve the following goals:

  • Limit access to a specified system in your domain to members of a specific user group.
  • Allow only a specific service to be used to access systems in your domain.

By default, IdM is configured with a default HBAC rule named allow_all, which means universal access to every host for every user via every relevant service in the entire IdM domain.

You can fine-tune access to different hosts by replacing the default allow_all rule with your own set of HBAC rules. For centralized and simplified access control management, you can apply HBAC rules to user groups, host groups, or service groups instead of individual users, hosts, or services.

Create an HBAC rule using Ansible to control which users can access specific hosts through designated services in your Identity Management (IdM) domain.

Prerequisites

Procedure

  1. Create your Ansible playbook file that defines the HBAC policy whose presence you want to ensure. To simplify this step, you can copy and modify the example in the /usr/share/ansible/collections/ansible_collections/freeipa/ansible_freeipa/playbooks/hbacrule/ensure-hbacrule-allhosts-present.yml file:

    ---
    - name: Playbook to handle hbacrules
      hosts: ipaserver
    
      vars_files:
      - /home/user_name/MyPlaybooks/secret.yml
      tasks:
      # Ensure idm_user can access client.idm.example.com via the sshd service
      - freeipa.ansible_freeipa.ipahbacrule:
          ipaadmin_password: "{{ ipaadmin_password }}"
          name: login
          user: idm_user
          host: client.idm.example.com
          hbacsvc:
          - sshd
          state: present

    For details about all variables used in the playbook, see the /usr/share/ansible/collections/ansible_collections/freeipa/ansible_freeipa/README-hbacsvc.md file on the control node.

  2. Run the playbook:

    $ ansible-playbook --vault-password-file=password_file -v -i path_to_inventory_directory/inventory.file path_to_playbooks_directory/ensure-new-hbacrule-present.yml

Verification

  1. Log in to the IdM Web UI as administrator.
  2. Navigate to Policy Host-Based-Access-Control HBAC Test.
  3. In the Who tab, select idm_user.
  4. In the Accessing tab, select client.idm.example.com.
  5. In the Via service tab, select sshd.
  6. In the Rules tab, select login.
  7. In the Run test tab, click the Run test button. If you see ACCESS GRANTED, the HBAC rule is implemented successfully.
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