Trac Permissions

Trac uses a simple but flexible permission system to control what users can and can’t access.

Permission privilegies are managed using the trac-admin tool.

Regular visitors, non-authenticated users, accessing the system are assigned the default role (user) named anonymous. Assign permissions to the anonymous user to set privilegies for non-authenticated/guest users.

In addition to these privileges users can be granted additional individual rights in effect when authenticated and logged into the system.

Available privileges

  • TRAC_ADMIN
  • LOG_VIEW
  • FILE_VIEW
  • CHANGESET_VIEW
  • BROWSER_VIEW
  • TICKET_VIEW, TICKET_CREATE, TICKET_MODIFY, TICKET_ADMIN
  • REPORT_VIEW, REPORT_CREATE, REPORT_MODIFY, REPORT_DELETE, REPORT_ADMIN, REPORT_SQL_VIEW
  • WIKI_VIEW, WIKI_CREATE, WIKI_MODIFY, WIKI_DELETE, WIKI_ADMIN
  • MILESTONE_VIEW, MILESTONE_CREATE, MILESTONE_MODIFY, MILESTONE_DELETE
  • ROADMAP_VIEW, ROADMAP_ADMIN
  • TIMELINE_VIEW
  • SEARCH_VIEW
  • CONFIG_VIEW

The something_ADMIN privileges are just shortcuts that can be used to grant a user all the something privileges in one go. Having TRAC_ADMIN is like being root on a *NIX system, it will let you do anything you want.

Granting privileges

Currently the only way to grant privileges to users is by using the trac-admin script. The current set of privileges can be listed with the following command:

  $ trac-admin /path/to/projenv permission list

This command will let the user bob delete reports:

  $ trac-admin /path/to/projenv permission add bob REPORT_DELETE

Permission groups

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

  $ trac-admin /path/to/projenv permission add developer WIKI_ADMIN
  $ trac-admin /path/to/projenv permission add developer REPORT_ADMIN
  $ trac-admin /path/to/projenv permission add developer TICKET_MODIFY
  $ trac-admin /path/to/projenv permission add bob developer
  $ trac-admin /path/to/projenv permission add john developer

Default permissions

Granting privileges to the special user anonymous can be used to control what an anonymous user can do before they have logged in.

In the same way, privileges granted to the special user authenticated will apply to any authenticated (logged in) user.


See also: TracAdmin, TracGuide