Policy Authority Module

Overview

This module is only called for calculating the “Expected” result if [patrole] test_custom_requirements is False.

Using the PolicyAuthority class, policy verification is performed by:

  1. Pooling together the default in-code policy rules.

  2. Overriding the defaults with custom policy rules located in a policy.json, if the policy file exists and the custom policy definition is explicitly defined therein.

  3. Confirming that the policy action – for example, “list_users” – exists. (oslo.policy otherwise claims that role “foo” is allowed to perform policy action “bar”, for example, because it defers to the “default” policy rule and oftentimes the default can be “anyone allowed”).

  4. Performing a call with all necessary data to oslo.policy and returning the expected result back to rbac_rule_validation decorator.

When to use

This RbacAuthority class can be used to validate the default OpenStack policy configuration. It is recommended that this approach be used for RBAC validation for clouds that use little to no policy customizations or overrides.

This validation approach should be used when:

  • Validating the out-of-the-box policy-in-code OpenStack policy configuration.

    It is important that the default OpenStack policy configuration be validated before deploying OpenStack into production. Bugs exist in software and the earlier they can be caught and prevented (via CI/CD, for example), the better. Patrole continues to be used to identify default policy bugs across OpenStack services.

  • Validating policy reliably and accurately.

    Relying on oslo.policy to compute the expected test results provides accurate tests, without the hassle of having to reinvent the wheel. Since OpenStack APIs use oslo.policy for policy enforcement, it makes sense to compute expected results by using the same library, ensuring test reliability.

  • Continuously validating policy changes to OpenStack projects under development by gating them against Patrole CI/CD jobs run by Zuul.

Implementation

Policy Authority Module