Man page "sshd_config" ambiguousness

Reuti reuti at staff.uni-marburg.de
Wed Mar 29 22:02:15 AEDT 2017


Hi,

Defining in "sshd_config" one or more of the possible entries DenyUsers, AllowUsers, DenyGroups, and AllowGroups it turns out, that all of these must be satisfied to grant access. I found many entries on the web clearly stating that it's essentially an intersection of the sets AllowGroups and AlowUsers and not an union. While I can live with this fact when it's the intended behavior, I wonder why the man page explaining these entries was never adjusted. I mean:

===
$ man sshd_config
…
AllowGroups
[…] The allow/deny directives are processed in the following order: DenyUsers, AllowUsers, DenyGroups, and finally AllowGroups.
===

For me this always sounded like having an effect one usually find in firewalls: the first matching rule will deny or allow access, and the fall through case must be defined as a special rule.

But it's not the case. While I understand that internal to the `sshd` daemon one must handle one constraint after the other, the behavior for the user (and the user is here is an admin setting it up) is more like:

===
$ man sshd_config
…
AllowGroups
[…] The allow/deny directives (if present) DenyUsers, AllowUsers, DenyGroups, and AllowGroups will all be checked and a user will be granted access only, if all files permit this. By default a user is permitted to login, unless one or both of the files AllowUsers and AllowGroups is present, where all users not being listed therein are denied access.
===

I would really like to see an update man page to avoid the confusion which AFAICS many trapped into.

-- Reuti
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 203 bytes
Desc: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail
URL: <http://lists.mindrot.org/pipermail/openssh-unix-dev/attachments/20170329/7b438681/attachment.bin>


More information about the openssh-unix-dev mailing list