= Features/gss-proxy = https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/gss-proxy
Feature owner(s): Simo Sorce ssorce@redhat.com, Günther Deschner gdeschner@redhat.com
The main purpose of this project is to replace rpc.svcgssd(8), the server-side rpcsec_gss daemon.
The gss-proxy consists of a standardized RPC protocol, a client and server implementation with other future components. The gss-proxy protocol allows proxying of GSSAPI initiation and authentication.
== Detailed description == The goal is to have a GSS-API proxy, with standardizable protocol and a [somewhat portable] reference client and server implementation. There are several motivations for this some of which are:
- Kernel-mode GSS-API applications (CIFS, NFS, AFS, ...) need to be able to leave all complexity of GSS_Init/Accept_sec_context() out of the kernel by upcalling to a daemon that does all the dirty work.
- Isolation and privilege separation for user-mode applications. For example: letting HTTP servers use but not see the keytab entries for HTTP/* principals for accepting security contexts.
- Possibly an ssh-agent-like SSH agent for GSS credentials -- a gss-agent.
In order to use the gssproxy only the gssproxy daemon has to be started at boottime. Once this is done, the GSSAPI mechglue library will make sure all GSSAPI calls issued by an application are directed to the gssproxy service transparently. Depending on the configuration of the system, the gssproxy daemon will then allow or disallow access to cryptographic keys stored in keytabs on the system.
Two major features that are planned to be achieved for Fedora19:
- rpc.gssd, the NFS client application, should be enabled to use the gssproxy. It will be possible to aquire tickets for kerberized NFS mounts given user keytabs.
- gssproxy will offer Kerberos ticket renewal when user keytabs are available
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