Authorizing remote procedure calls for CQL execution

Steps to configure RPC permissions for external clients.

DataStax Enterprise supports authentication and role-based access control for Remote Procedure Calls to the DSE database.

The syntax for remote calls for the specified procedure on the remote host is:

CALL Object.Method(parameter1, parameter2)

RPC permissions

RPC permissions are role-based to provide fine grained control over which roles can execute which commands. The GRANT and REVOKE CQL commands provide and revoke access to objects and methods.

DataStax Enterprise supports this CQL syntax in cqlsh to grant RPC permissions:

GRANT permission ON ALL REMOTE CALLS TO role;
GRANT EXECUTE ON REMOTE OBJECT object TO role;
GRANT EXECUTE ON REMOTE METHOD object.method TO role;

DataStax Enterprise supports this CQL syntax in cqlsh to revoke RPC permissions:

REVOKE EXECUTE ON ALL REMOTE CALLS FROM role;
REVOKE EXECUTE ON REMOTE OBJECT object FROM role;
REVOKE EXECUTE ON REMOTE METHOD object.method FROM role;

where:

EXECUTE is the only permission that applies to RPC, see the Access Control Matrix for more details
role is the role to grant or revoke authorization to.

Granting RPC permissions to DseClientTool

You must configure RPC permissions for external clients to run the dse client-tool command and to launch Spark:

GRANT EXECUTE ON REMOTE OBJECT DseClientTool TO USER;

Note: RPC permission for the DseClientTool object is required to run Spark because the DseClientTool object is called implicitly by the Spark launcher.

If access is attempted without permissions, you will see an error message similar to:

com.datastax.driver.core.exceptions.UnauthorizedException: User X has no EXECUTE permission on <rpc method DseClientTool.getSparkMasterAddress> or any of its parents

To resolve the problem, set RPC permissions for the DseClientTool object. For example:

GRANT EXECUTE ON REMOTE OBJECT DseClientTool TO ADMINROLE;

Managing the permissions of a large number of users can be considerably simplified through the reuse of a small number of high-level roles.