Re: sshd_conf and AllowGroups - how to make work with non-primary groups?

[Igor Peshansky <pechtcha at cs dot nyu dot edu>]

On Mon, 27 Feb 2006, Mark A. Ziesemer wrote:

> I, too, am trying to lock down ssh access.  Using OpenSSH's AllowGroups
> configuration option looks like it would fit my needs perfectly, but it
> doesn't work!  More specifically, it ends up denying all users, unless the
> user's PRIMARY group (as defined in /etc/passwd) is within AllowGroups.
>
> I already found and read the following related posts, none of which actually
> resolve the issue:
> http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2003-03/msg00128.html
> http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2000-03/msg00591.html
> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.os.cygwin/73007 ("sshd_conf and local groups"
> started 12/31/2005)
>
> Using AllowUsers works as expected - but this is an administrative
> nightmare.  Ideally, I'd like to create a group called "SshUsers" and
> set "AllowGroups SshUsers".  This works, but only if I set the needed
> user accounts in /etc/passwd to use this as their primary group.  Some
> users need their primary group to remain otherwise for other reasons...
>
> I'm guessing this is more of an issue with the Cygwin user commands than
> it is with the OpenSSH implementation.  I DID run both mkpasswd and
> mkgroup, and both my /etc/passwd and /etc/group files are populated.
> However, running "groups myuser" or "id -Gn myuser" returns only the
> primary group - "Domain Users".  The results are identical whether
> running bash locally or through an ssh connection.
>
> I'm currently running "CYGWIN_NT-5.2 z 1.5.20s(0.154/4/2) 20060227
> 13:07:35 i686 Cygwin", but have been able to reproduce this back to
> 1.5.18, etc...
>
> Any assistance would be greatly appreciated - thanks!

Let's start here:

> Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html

In particular, for the group to be recognized by Cygwin, it needs to be in
/etc/group.  I would guess that you're trying to set up a domain group...
You didn't say exactly what mkgroup options you used to update /etc/group,
so it may simply be that you're missing the necessary groups there (and
thus Cygwin is unable to determine group membership).  But a proper
problem report based on the above guidelines (one that includes an
attached output of "cygcheck -svr" on your system) would allow us to track
this down further.
	Igor
-- 
				http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
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ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_		Igor Peshansky, Ph.D. (name changed!)
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