Install sudo policy server | EPM-UL

Endpoint Privilege Management Unix & Linux Sudo Manager, hereinafter Sudo Manager, provides improved management and maintenance of sudo files and data, while leveraging some of the features of Endpoint Privilege Management Unix & Linux without replacing sudo.

There are two components to install to use Sudo Manager:

• Sudo Manager policy server
• Sudo Manager plugin client

Sudo Manager installation considerations

Sudo Manager is a non-intrusive software program that does not require kernel reconfiguration, system reboot, or to replace system executable files. The items in this section contain information you should consider when planning your implementation.

Flavor and release definitions

Flavor is a BeyondTrust term that defines a build of a BeyondTrust product, such as Sudo Manager, that is compiled and tested for a certain range of operating system versions and underlying hardware. The README file describes which flavor is the right match for specific combinations of hardware and operating systems in the Release Identifier column. The release identifier is the flavor plus the version of the Sudo Manager distribution.

During installation, the flavor of the distribution you are using will be compared to the flavor required for the operating system and hardware version combination you are installing on. If you believe that you are using the correct version for the machine you are installing on but the installer is returning a flavor mismatch, contact BeyondTrust Technical Support for assistance.

Interactive versus packaged installation

Sudo policy server

All Sudo Policy Server flavors can be installed by using an interactive program that presents you with a series of options. Your choices determine the details of the installation for a particular host.

The client registration facility can be used to automate the installation of new clients by downloading the default configuration from the primary Policy Server. Options are defaulted within the interactive installation, and shared encryption keys are copied over.

For certain flavors, the Sudo Policy Server can be installed by using package installers. Package installers enable you to choose the options once, and then install that configuration of Sudo Policy Server non-interactively on multiple identical hosts. Using package installers also takes advantage of the operating system’s installation management system, which tracks the source of installed files and enables their safe removal.

Sudo Manager clients

The Sudo Manager client is only supported on Linux x86_64.The installation method is through the interactive sudomgrinstall program. Package installers are not available.

ℹ️

For more information, Supported platforms.

Resource overhead

There are not any start-up or shutdown programs associated with Sudo Manager client. From a system resource perspective, a basic Sudo Manager session uses about the same overhead as a telnet session with additional front-end work for processing the policy security file.

The Sudo Manager Policy Server is the pblighttpd/pbconfigd REST server daemon. The accept, reject and finish events are logged by the pblogd daemon on a Log Server. These resources are requested by the sudo manager plugin client. The REST services are started by a superdaemon, and normally run continuously. The pblogd daemon can be started by a superdaemon, or may itself run continuously as a daemon. The superdaemons include systemd, inetd, xinetd, launchd, or SMF depending on the platform.

For systems based on RedHat version 7+, xinetd is no longer installed by default since it has been superceded by systemd, which is an init system. The installation program performs a check to see if systemd exists and is functional. If it exists, it configures Sudo Manager daemons to be managed by systemd. If systemd is not present, the installation program checks if xinetd is installed and running and displays a warning message if it is not.

ℹ️

The terms monitored task and secured task are interchangeable.

SSL adds some startup overhead for certificate exchange and verification. The encryption overhead is slightly larger than self-contained encryption technologies such as DES because of the use of packet checksums by SSL.

ℹ️

Sudo Manager requires 10 to 50 MB of disk space, depending on the installation options selected.

Installation directories

Sudo Manager is not sensitive about the location of its binary files; you can place them in any convenient directory. However, there are a few points to consider when you are selecting installation directories:

• Online manuals such as user man pages and Sudo Manager documentation should be accessible from every computer to enable users to get online help for Sudo Manager programs.

Default directories

The following table lists Sudo Manager components and their locations. The installation script uses these locations by default, but you can change them during installation. Usually /usr/local/bin is used for user programs and /usr/sbin for administrator and daemon programs, depending on the platform.

Default directories for Sudo Manager components

The default log directory varies by platform to match that platform’s conventions. The directories /usr/adm, /var/adm, and /var/log are used interchangeably throughout as the default location of the database files generated and used by Sudo Manager log files.

Prefix and suffix installations

The Sudo Manager policy server or Sudo Manager clients do not support prefix and suffix installations.

System file modifications

The Sudo Manager client modifies:

• /etc/sudo.conf to use the Sudo Manager plugin.
• /etc/pam.d/sudo-I might be copied from /etc/pam.d/sudo; and the necessary libraries and plugin are installed in /usr/lib/beyondtrust/pb/

Before you begin

Sudo Manager runs on the same infrastructure as EPM-UL. Plan and deploy those components before you install the sudo policy server.

For host planning, licensing, ports, encryption, syslog, NIS, and network verification, see Installation preparation.

That page applies to Sudo Manager without change, except for the two considerations below.

Select sudo policy server hosts

Determine which machines to use as sudo policy servers. These hosts act as central repositories for the sudoers policy files obtained from sudo client hosts.

Isolate hosts designated as sudo policy servers from regular user activity. This shields your policies from users who can elevate their privileges.

Select sudo hosts (clients)

Determine which sudo hosts in your environment will have their sudoers files and generated data managed by Sudo Manager. The sudomgrinstall program configures sudo on these hosts to use the Sudo Manager plugin.

ℹ️

Sudo Manager uses two of the EPM-UL ports:

• pbrestport (default=24351) for client registration and policy retrieval
• logport (default=24347) for event logging

Install sudo policy server

The Sudo Policy Server supports interactive installation methods and package installation methods for its server components.

ℹ️

For more information, see:

• Interactive versus packaged installation for sudo manager policy server: review to help you decide on the right install for your Sudo Manager implementation.
• Basic pbinstall Information: learn more about the pbinstall program.
• Advanced installation instructions using pbinstall: provides indepth details for install options

Overview

If you are installing Sudo Policy Server using pbinstall, the menu options will look similar to the following table.

1. For option 12, Install sudo Policy Server?, enter yes. If Registry Name Service is enabled, you are required to install the Registry Name Services Server. Review the section noted in the information box for more details.

2. Choose your options.
3. Use the c navigation command to continue the installation.
4. A prompt asks if you want to view the install script. Enter n.

🚧

Important

This option is intended for troubleshooting by BeyondTrust Technical Support. The generated install script contains thousands of lines of code.

5. A prompt asks if you want to install the product now. Enter y.

The pbinstall install script executes and installs components on this machine.

To support registration of subsequent Sudo Manager clients, pbinstall creates the following on the
Sudo Manager Policy Server:

• sudodefault default client registration profile: used when installing Sudo Manager clients.
• /etc/pbsudo.settings.default: a template for the /etc/pbsudo.settings file that is installed on each client.
• Client registration Application IDs and their keys:
  • SUDOMGRADMIN provides administrative access
  • SUDOMGRREAD provides read-only access

Upgrades and reinstallations

The Sudo Policy Server installers are designed to enable easy upgrades of an installed version to a new version. During an upgrade, the current configuration can be retained, or a new Sudo Policy Server configuration can be put in place.

Sudo Policy Server installation scripts pbinstall and pbmakeremotetar can also be used to perform upgrades and reinstallations.

Pre-upgrade instructions

Before performing an upgrade or reinstallation, do the following:

1. Obtain the new release, either on an ISO file or using FTP.
2. Read the release notes and installation instructions.
3. Determine the order for updating the Policy Server host machines. If your current installation includes Policy Server host failover machines, you may want to consider upgrading the Policy Server hosts failover machines first, followed by the submit hosts and run hosts, followed by the primary Policy Server hosts.

ℹ️

The settings files on the Policy Server hosts may need to be updated as each Policy Server host is upgraded.

4. If your current installation includes one or more Policy Server host failover machines, then ensure that the security policy files on the primary Policy Server host and the Policy Server host failover machines are synchronized.

5. Verify the current location of the administration programs, user programs, and log files. This information is in the pb.cfg file (/etc/pb.cfg or pb/install/pb.cfg.{flavor}) and the settings file, /etc/pb.settings.

6. If you do not have a recent backup of the host, or if it is imperative that no log entries can be lost, then create a save directory (for example, /var/tmp/pb.{rev_rel}) that can be used to restore Sudo Policy Server files from in case the upgrade fails.

7. Copy (don't move) the files for every host type, plus any that apply to the roles installed on that host. Create a shell script to copy the necessary files.

   Host type	Files to save
   All host types	/etc/services /etc/pb.settings /etc/pb.cfg (and pb.cfg.* on older installations) /etc/pb.key (if encryption is in use) pb* log files (typically /var/adm, /var/log, or /usr/adm)
   Policy server — also save	Database files (contents of databasedir, default /opt/pbul/dbs) /etc/inetd.conf (or your xinetd, launchd, or SMF configuration file) Any event log or I/O log files you want to keep
   Log server — also save	/etc/inetd.conf (or your xinetd, launchd, or SMF configuration file) Any event log or I/O log files you want to keep

8. Determine in which directories to install the new log files, administration programs, and user programs. If you chose different directories for the Sudo Policy Server programs, you might need to update the path variable for the root user and other users.

9. Be aware that users cannot submit monitored task requests while Sudo Policy Server updates are in progress. Consider writing a Sudo Policy Server configuration policy file that rejects all users from executing pbrun and echoes a print statement to their screen, informing them that a Sudo Policy Server upgrade is in progress.

10. Sudo Policy Server releases are always upward-compatible when encryption is not used. We recommend that you perform an uninstall if a release is replaced by a Sudo Policy Server version older than v2.8.1.

11. If you use an encrypted settings file and intend to upgrade or reinstall, then the unencrypted version of the settings file needs to be restored before performing an upgrade or reinstall; otherwise, the settings file cannot be read.

12. If you have a previous installation of Sudo Policy Server for v5.1 or earlier and your encryption is set to none, then when you install Sudo Policy Server v5.2, all the encryption options (options 98 through 103) will be set to none. You can change these options during installation.

ℹ️

For more information on changing these options, see Step-by-Step Instructions for a Basic Installation Using pbinstall .

pbinstall install upgrades

To upgrade or reinstall Sudo Policy Server with the same configuration as the currently installed version, run pbinstall in batch mode:

./pbinstall -b

If you perform a reinstall of an older version, be aware that the older version may not have the same features as the newer version. In this case, the upgrade process discards the configuration of the features that are not available in the older version of Sudo Policy Server. When you upgrade to the newer version, make sure to configure the newer features when running pbinstall.

To change the configuration of Sudo Policy Server during the upgrade or reinstall, run pbinstall in interactive mode:

./pbinstall

The present configuration is read into pbinstall. Make the desired configuration changes and then use the c command to continue. pbinstall then installs Sudo Policy Server with the new configuration.

ℹ️

For step-by-step instructions for using pbinstall, see Step-by-Step Instructions for a Basic Installation Using pbinstall .

Post-upgrade instructions

If you want to encrypt your settings file after upgrading Sudo Policy Server, then save a copy of the unencrypted file (for future upgrades) and re-encrypt the settings file.