README

Welcome to SPOCP
----------------

Spocp stands for Simple POlicy Control Protocol, but it is actually
more than that it is a whole Policy Control System.

It is supposed to be used as a general authorisation server that
application can query if it wants to know if a certain entity is
allowed to perform a certain operation.

Spocp does not handle authentication, it is assumes that authentication
is done by some other means.

The distribution provides "spocd", a stand alone policy engine that
uses the native Spocp client protocol a spocp library which you
can link into your application if you for some reason wants to integrate
the policy server very close to the application. It also provides a Apache 
module that can turn your Apache server into a policy server that
replies to SAML/SOAP authorization queries and as an example of a
Spocp client a PAM module that can handle PAM 'account' queries.
 
To build the main package, which consists of a library and the
the 'native' spocp server implementation you should only have
to run "./configure' and then make.

Spocp lives at http://www.spocp.org/ and is distributed under GPL.

Installing Spocp
----------------

With default configuration, 'make install' will install the
pieces in '/usr/local/spocp'. If you use the default configuration
adding '/usr/local/spocp/lib' to /etc/ld.so.conf and rerunning
'lconfig' will make the next couple of steps easier.

There are two more programs that you might want to compile
depending on what you want SPOCP to do for you:

1) making the Apache module, which will allow you to use a Apache
server as a frontend to the policy server.
You can make this module by changing directory to 
<spocp_sourcedir>/apache and in that directory run "sh make.sh".

You probably have to be root to do this. This command not only
creates the module but also copies it to the apache module directory
as well as modifies the apache configuration file 'http.conf' such that
the SPOCP module will be automagically loaded the next time you start Apache.

There are some more things you have to do to get the module to work
properly. What that is can be read in the admin documentation (doc/adminguide.html).

2) making the PAM module, which will allow you to use SPOCP as
a PAM module answering "account"-queries. 

You can make this module by changing directory to 
<spocp_sourcedir>/client/pam_spocp and in that directory run "sh make.sh".
When you have done so, you will have a file by the name 'pam_spocp.so'.
This file you have to move/copy to the directory where the PAM modules are.
On my system thats /lib/security.

Again, some cofiguration has to be done to get this module to run, so
please read the admin documentation (doc/adminguide.html)

Help With Spocp
----------------

There is a mailing list for support or discussion of Spocp. It lives as
<discuss@spocp.org>. See http://www.spocp.org for sign-up address and
a link to the archives of past messages.