Role Assignment Traces

The following sections walk you through a few sample role traces. When you understand these traces, you should be able to understand any role trace.

When the User Is Assigned Roles

Roles are assigned at authentication, so this type of trace is found in the catalina.out file of Identity Server. This is a trace of a user who does not match the requirements to be assigned the Manager Role (for a definition of this Role policy, see Figure 32-9).

<amLogEntry> 2009-06-11T15:38:38Z INFO NIDS Application: AM#500199050: AMDEVICEID#9921459858EAAC29: AMAUTHID#YfdEmqCT2ZutwybD1eYSpfph8g5a5aMl6MGryq1hIqc= : IDP RolesPep.evaluate(), policy trace:
   ~~RL~0~~~~Rule Count: 1~~Success(67)
   ~~RU~RuleID_1181251958207~Manager~DNF~~1:1~~Success(67)
   ~~CS~1~~ANDs~~1~~False(68)
   ~~CO~1~LdapGroup(6645):no-param:hidden-value:~ldap-group-is-member-of~SelectedLdapGroup(66455):hidden-param:hidden-value:~~~False(68)
</amLogEntry>

This trace describes the following about the policy.

The RL trace indicates that the policy has one rule and that the policy evaluated without error.
The RU trace indicates that the rule (RuleID_1181251958207) has one condition and one action and that the rule evaluated without error.
The CS trace indicates that the condition set evaluated to False (the user logging in does not match the conditions of the set).
The CO trace indicates that the condition evaluated to False (the user logging in does not match the condition).

When you are troubleshooting why a user is not granted access to a resource that uses a role in its Authentication policy, the first step should be to look at Identity Server file and determine whether the user was assigned the role. In this trace, you can see that the user was not assigned the role. To fix this problem, you can either change the conditions of the Role policy to match the user or change the user’s information so that the user matches the existing condition in the Role policy.

When the Role Policy Is Not Enabled

Sometimes a Role policy is created, but the Role policy is not enabled for Identity Server. When this happens, the trace looks similar to the following:

<amLogEntry> 2009-06-11T16:06:03Z INFO NIDS Application: AM#500199050: AMDEVICEID#9921459858EAAC29: AMAUTHID#YfdEmqCT2ZutwybD1eYSpfph8g5a5aMl6MGryq1hIqc= : IDP RolesPep.evaluate(), policy trace:
   ~~RL~0~~~~Rule Count: 0~~Success(67)
 </amLogEntry>

When you see Role policy traces that contain only the RL trace line, you need to enable the Role policy.

When an Authorization Policy Uses a Role

When a user requests access to a resource that has an Authorization policy that uses a role, the user is checked for the role assignment. The trace of this evaluation is in the ESP log file of Access Gateway that is processing the request. Such a trace looks similar to the following:

<amLogEntry> 2009-07-13T22:13:29Z INFO NIDS Application: AM#501102050: AMDEVICEID#esp-51A474B83BFDDF4F: AMAUTHID#YfdEmqCT2ZutwybD1eYSpfph8g5a5aMl6MGryq1hIqc=: PolicyID#N748097P-3507-3KP7-4241-410PN4152094: NXPESID#1718: AGAuthorization Policy Trace:
   ~~RL~1~~~~Rule Count: 1~~Success(0)
   ~~RU~RuleID_1182876316974~Allow_Sales~DNF~~1:1~~Success(0)
   ~~CS~1~~ANDs~NOT~1~~True(69)
   ~~CO~1~CurrentRoles(6660):no-param:authenticated~com.novell.nxpe. condition.NxpeOperator@string-substring~SelectedRole(6661):hidden-param:hidden-value:~~~False(68)
   ~~PA~1~~Deny Access Messasge~Sorry, you must work in sales today.~~~Success(0)
   ~~PC~1~~Document=(ou=xpemlPEP,ou=mastercdn,ou=ContentPublisherCon tainer,ou=Partition,ou=PartitionsContainer,ou=VCDN_Root,ou=accessManagerContainer,o=novell:romaContentCollectionXMLDoc),Policy=(Allow_Sales),Rule=(1::RuleID_1182876316974),Action=(Deny::1)~~~~Success(0)
</amLogEntry>

This trace is for a Deny policy that denies access if the user has not been assigned the Sales role. The CO line indicates that the condition is looking for a role and that the user did not match the condition.

The CS line indicates that the condition is a negative condition, meaning that the user matches the condition set when the user does not match the condition. This is the case for this user, so the condition set evaluates to True, and the action is then applied.

The PA line describes the action that was applied.