File System Access Control Lists
Contributed by Tom Rhodes and Pat GUO.
In conjunction with file system enhancements like snapshots, FreeBSD 5.0 and later offers the security of File System Access Control Lists (ACLs).
Access Control Lists extend the standard UNIX® permission model in a highly compatible (POSIX®.1e) way. This feature permits an administrator to make use of and take advantage of a more sophisticated security model.
To enable ACL support for UFS file systems, the following:
options UFS_ACL
must be compiled into the kernel. If this option has not been compiled in, a warning message will be displayed when attempting to mount a file system supporting ACLs. This option is included in the GENERIC kernel. ACLs rely on extended attributes being enabled on the file system. Extended attributes are natively supported in the next generation UNIX file system, UFS2.
Note: A higher level of administrative overhead is required to configure extended attributes on UFS1 than on UFS2. The performance of extended attributes on UFS2 is also substantially higher. As a result, UFS2 is generally recommended in preference to UFS1 for use with access control lists.