Trac Permissions

Trac uses a simple, case sensitive, permission system to control what users can and can't access.

Permissions are managed using the trac-admin tool or the General / Permissions panel in the Admin tab of the web interface.

In addition to the default permission policy described in this page, it is possible to activate additional permission policies by enabling plugins and listing them in [trac] permission_policies. See TracFineGrainedPermissions for more details.

Non-authenticated users accessing the system are assigned the name anonymous. Assign permissions to the anonymous user to set privileges for anonymous/guest users. The parts of Trac that a user does not have privileges for will not be displayed in the navigation bar. In addition to these privileges, users can be granted additional individual rights in effect when authenticated and logged into the system. All logged in users belong to the virtual group authenticated, which inherits permissions from anonymous.

Graphical Admin Tab

To access this tab, a user must have one of the following permissions: TRAC_ADMIN, PERMISSION_ADMIN, PERMISSION_GRANT, PERMISSION_REVOKE. The permissions can be granted using the trac-admin command with a more detailed description below:

$trac-admin/path/to/projenvpermissionaddbobTRAC_ADMIN

Then, the user bob will be able to see the Admin tab, and can access the permissions menu. This menu allows you to perform the following actions, but from the browser rather than requiring root access to the server. Use at least one lowercase character in user names, as all-uppercase names are reserved for permissions.

admin.png

admin-permissions.png

admin-permissions-TICKET_ADMIN.png

From the graphical admin tab, users with PERMISSION_GRANT will only be allowed to grant permissions that they possess, and users with PERMISSION_REVOKE will only be allowed to revoke permissions that they possess. For example, a user cannot grant MILESTONE_ADMIN unless they have PERMISSION_GRANT and MILESTONE_ADMIN, and they cannot revoke MILESTONE_ADMIN unless they have PERMISSION_REVOKE and MILESTONE_ADMIN. PERMISSION_ADMIN just grants the user both PERMISSION_GRANT and PERMISSION_REVOKE, and users with TRAC_ADMIN can grant or revoke any permission.

Available Privileges

To enable all privileges for a user, use the TRAC_ADMIN permission. This permission is like being root on a *NIX system: it will allow you to perform any operation on Trac.

Otherwise, individual privileges can be assigned to users for the different functional areas of Trac and note that the privilege names are uppercase:

Repository Browser

Ticket System

Roadmap

Reports

Wiki System

Permissions

Others

Attachment Permissions

Attachment permissions are handled by LegacyAttachmentPolicy, and unlike the permissions discussed so far, the permissions provided by LegacyAttachmentPolicy are not directly granted. Rather, the ability to create, view and delete attachments is determined by the attachment's parent realm and permissions that the user possesses for that realm.

The attachment actions are determined by the following permissions in the ticket, wiki and milestone realms:

An authenticated user can delete an attachment they added without possessing the permission that grants ATTACHMENT_DELETE.

If explicit attachment permissions are preferred, then ATTACHMENT_CREATE, ATTACHMENT_DELETE and ATTACHMENT_VIEW can be created using the ​ExtraPermissionsProvider. The simplest implementation is to simply define the actions:

[extra-permissions]
_perms=ATTACHMENT_CREATE, ATTACHMENT_DELETE, ATTACHMENT_VIEW

An alternative configuration adds an ATTACHMENT_ADMIN meta-permission that grants the other 3 permissions:

[extra-permissions]
ATTACHMENT_ADMIN=ATTACHMENT_CREATE, ATTACHMENT_DELETE, ATTACHMENT_VIEW

The explicit permissions can be used in conjunction with LegacyAttachmentPolicy, or LegacyAttachmentPolicy can be removed from permission_policies, in which case only users that have been explicitly granted the corresponding attachment actions will be able to create, delete and view attachments.

Granting Privileges

Privileges are granted to users through trac-admin. The current set of privileges can be listed with the following command:

$trac-admin/path/to/projenvpermissionlist

This command will allow the user bob to delete reports:

$trac-admin/path/to/projenvpermissionaddbobREPORT_DELETE

The permission add command also accepts multiple privilege names:

$trac-admin/path/to/projenvpermissionaddbobREPORT_DELETEWIKI_CREATE

Or add all privileges:

$trac-admin/path/to/projenvpermissionaddbobTRAC_ADMIN

Permission Groups

There are two built-in groups, authenticated and anonymous. Any user who has not logged in is automatically in the anonymous group. Any user who has logged in is also in the authenticated group. The authenticated group inherits permissions from the anonymous group. For example, if the anonymous group has permission WIKI_MODIFY, it is not necessary to add the WIKI_MODIFY permission to the authenticated group as well.

Custom groups may be defined that inherit permissions from the two built-in groups.

Permissions can be grouped together to form roles such as developer, admin, etc.

$trac-admin/path/to/projenvpermissionadddeveloperWIKI_ADMIN
$trac-admin/path/to/projenvpermissionadddeveloperREPORT_ADMIN
$trac-admin/path/to/projenvpermissionadddeveloperTICKET_MODIFY
$trac-admin/path/to/projenvpermissionaddbobdeveloper
$trac-admin/path/to/projenvpermissionaddjohndeveloper

Group membership can be checked by doing a permission list with no further arguments; the resulting output will include group memberships. Use at least one lowercase character in group names, as all-uppercase names are reserved for permissions.

Adding a New Group and Permissions

Permission groups can be created by assigning a user to a group you wish to create, then assign permissions to that group.

The following will add bob to the new group called beta_testers and then will assign WIKI_ADMIN permissions to that group. Thus, bob will inherit the WIKI_ADMIN permission.

$trac-admin/path/to/projenvpermissionaddbobbeta_testers
$trac-admin/path/to/projenvpermissionaddbeta_testersWIKI_ADMIN

Removing Permissions

Permissions can be removed using the 'remove' command.

This command will prevent the user bob from deleting reports:

$trac-admin/path/to/projenvpermissionremovebobREPORT_DELETE

Just like permission add, this command accepts multiple privilege names.

You can also remove all privileges for a specific user:

$trac-admin/path/to/projenvpermissionremovebob'*'

Or one privilege for all users:

$trac-admin/path/to/projenvpermissionremove'*'REPORT_ADMIN

Creating New Privileges

To create custom permissions, for example to be used in a custom workflow, enable the optional ​tracopt.perm.config_perm_provider.ExtraPermissionsProvider component in the "Plugins" admin panel, and add the desired permissions to the [extra-permissions] section in your trac.ini. For more information, please refer to the documentation on the TracIni page after enabling the component.

Default Permissions

By default on a new Trac installation, the anonymous user has view access to everything in Trac, but is not able to create or modify anything. The authenticated user has the permissions to create and modify tickets and wiki pages.

anonymous

BROWSER_VIEW
CHANGESET_VIEW
FILE_VIEW
LOG_VIEW
MILESTONE_VIEW
REPORT_SQL_VIEW
REPORT_VIEW
ROADMAP_VIEW
SEARCH_VIEW
TICKET_VIEW
TIMELINE_VIEW
WIKI_VIEW

authenticated

TICKET_CREATE
TICKET_MODIFY
WIKI_CREATE
WIKI_MODIFY

See also: TracAdmin, TracFineGrainedPermissions