Storing the Policy File

Considerations for storing the policy file(s) in HDFS include:

1. Replication count - Because the file is read for each query in Hive and read once every five minutes by all Impala daemons, you should increase this value; since it is a small file, setting the replication count equal to the number of client nodes in the cluster is reasonable.
2. Updating the file - Updates to the file are reflected immediately, so you should write them to a temporary copy of the file first, and then replace the existing file with the temporary one after all the updates are complete. This avoids race conditions caused by reads on an incomplete file.

Defining Roles

role1 = privilege1
role1 = privilege2

URIs

Any command which references a URI such as CREATE TABLE EXTERNAL, LOAD, IMPORT, EXPORT, and more, in addition to CREATE TEMPORARY FUNCTION requires the URI privilege. This is an important security control because without this users could simply create an external table over an existing table they do not have access to and bypass Sentry.

URIs must start with either hdfs:// or file://. If a URI starts with anything else, it will cause an exception and the policy file will be invalid.

data_read = server=server1->uri=file:///path/to/dir,\
server=server1->uri=hdfs://namenode:port/path/to/dir

  Important: Because the NameNode host and port must be specified, Cloudera strongly recommends you use High Availability (HA). This ensures that the URI will remain constant even if the NameNode changes.

Loading Data

In addition to the privilege in Sentry, the hive or impala user will require the appropriate file permissions to access the data being loaded. Groups can be used for this purpose. For example, create a group hive-users, and add the hive and impala users along with the users who will be loading data, to this group.

$ groupadd hive-users
$ usermod -G someuser,hive-users someuser
$ usermod -G hive,hive-users hive

External Tables

External tables require the ALL@database privilege in addition to the URI privilege. When data is being inserted through the EXTERNAL TABLE statement, or is referenced from an HDFS location outside the normal Hive database directories, the user needs appropriate permissions on the URIs corresponding to those HDFS locations. This means that the URI location must either be owned by the hive:hive user OR the hive/impala users must be members of the group that owns the directory.

[roles]
someuser_home_dir_role = server=server1->uri=hdfs://ha-nn-uri/user/someuser

CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE ... 
LOCATION 'hdfs://ha-nn-uri/user/someuser/mytable';

Policy Files

The following is an example of a policy file with a per-DB policy file. In this example, the first policy file, sentry-provider.ini would exist in HDFS; hdfs://ha-nn-uri/etc/sentry/sentry-provider.ini might be an appropriate location. The per-DB policy file is for the customer's database. It is located at hdfs://ha-nn-uri/etc/sentry/customers.ini.

[databases]
# Defines the location of the per DB policy file for the customers DB/schema 
customers = hdfs://ha-nn-uri/etc/sentry/customers.ini 

[groups]
# Assigns each Hadoop group to its set of roles 
manager = analyst_role, junior_analyst_role
analyst = analyst_role
jranalyst = junior_analyst_role
customers_admin = customers_admin_role
admin = admin_role 

[roles]
# The uris below define a define a landing skid which
# the user can use to import or export data from the system.
# Since the server runs as the user "hive" files in that directory
# must either have the group hive and read/write set or
# be world read/write.
analyst_role = server=server1->db=analyst1, \
    server=server1->db=jranalyst1->table=*->action=select    
    server=server1->uri=hdfs://ha-nn-uri/landing/analyst1
junior_analyst_role = server=server1->db=jranalyst1, \
    server=server1->uri=hdfs://ha-nn-uri/landing/jranalyst1 

# Implies everything on server1 -> customers. Privileges for
# customers can be defined in the global policy file even though 
# customers has its only policy file. Note that the Privileges from
# both the global policy file and the per-DB policy file
# are merged. There is no overriding.
customers_admin_role = server=server1->db=customers 

# Implies everything on server1.
admin_role = server=server1

customers.ini

[groups]
manager = customers_insert_role, customers_select_role
analyst = customers_select_role 

[roles]
customers_insert_role = server=server1->db=customers->table=*->action=insert
customers_select_role = server=server1->db=customers->table=*->action=select

  Important: Sentry does not support using the view keyword in policy files. If you want to define a role against a view, use the keyword table instead. For example, to define the role analyst_role against the view col_test_view:

[roles]
analyst_role = server=server1->db=default->table=col_test_view->action=select

Sentry Configuration File

The following is an example of a sentry-site.xml file.

  Important: If you are using Cloudera Manager 4.6 (or lower), make sure you do not store sentry-site.xml in /etc/hive/conf ; that directory is regenerated whenever the Hive client configurations are redeployed. Instead, use a directory such as /etc/sentry to store the sentry file.

If you are using Cloudera Manager 4.7 (or higher), Cloudera Manager will create and deploy sentry-site.xml for you.See Managing the Sentry Service for more details on configuring Sentry with Cloudera Manager.

sentry-site.xml

<configuration>
  <property>
    <name>hive.sentry.provider</name>
    <value>org.apache.sentry.provider.file.HadoopGroupResourceAuthorizationProvider</value>
  </property>

  <property>
    <name>hive.sentry.provider.resource</name>
    <value>/path/to/authz-provider.ini</value>
    <!-- 
       If the hdfs-site.xml points to HDFS, the path will be in HDFS;
       alternatively you could specify a full path, e.g.:
       hdfs://namenode:port/path/to/authz-provider.ini
       file:///path/to/authz-provider.ini
    -->
  </property>

  <property>
    <name>sentry.hive.server</name>
    <value>server1</value>
  </property>
</configuration>