This page documents the 0.10 release. Documentation for other releases can be found here.

Trac Permissions

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

Permission privileges are managed using either the trac-admin tool from the command line or the new (in version 0.11) Admin tab.

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 the privileges for will not be displayed in the navigation. 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

This feature is new in version 0.11.

To access this tab, a user must have TRAC_ADMIN privileges. This can be performed as follows (more on the trac-admin script below):

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

Then, the user will be able to see the Admin tab, and can then access the permissions menu. This menu will allow you to perform all the following actions, but from the browser without requiring root access to the server (just the correct permissions for your user account).

1. 
2. 
3. 

Available Privileges

To enable all privileges for a user, use the TRAC_ADMIN permission. This will also give them access to the Admin tab on the browser view. Having TRAC_ADMIN is like being root on a *NIX system: it will allow you to perform any operation.

Otherwise, individual privileges can be assigned to users for the various different functional areas of Trac (note that the privilege names are case-sensitive):

Repository Browser

BROWSER_VIEW	View directory listings in the repository browser
LOG_VIEW	View revision logs of files and directories in the repository browser
FILE_VIEW	View files in the repository browser
CHANGESET_VIEW	View repository check-ins

Ticket System

TICKET_VIEW	View existing tickets and perform ticket queries
TICKET_CREATE	Create new tickets
TICKET_APPEND	Add comments or attachments to tickets
TICKET_CHGPROP	Modify ticket properties (priority, assignment, keywords, etc.) except description field
TICKET_MODIFY	Includes both TICKET_APPEND and TICKET_CHGPROP, and in addition allows resolving tickets
TICKET_ADMIN	All TICKET_* permissions, plus the deletion of ticket attachments and modification of the description field

Attention: the REPORT_VIEW permission is necessary to show the "view tickets" link.

Roadmap

MILESTONE_VIEW	View a milestone
MILESTONE_CREATE	Create a new milestone
MILESTONE_MODIFY	Modify existing milestones
MILESTONE_DELETE	Delete milestones
MILESTONE_ADMIN	All MILESTONE_* permissions
ROADMAP_VIEW	View the roadmap page

Reports

REPORT_VIEW	View reports, i.e. the "view tickets" link
REPORT_SQL_VIEW	View the underlying SQL query of a report
REPORT_CREATE	Create new reports (Create report & save query buttons not shown)
REPORT_MODIFY	Modify existing reports
REPORT_DELETE	Delete reports
REPORT_ADMIN	All REPORT_* permissions

Wiki System

WIKI_VIEW	View existing wiki pages
WIKI_CREATE	Create new wiki pages
WIKI_MODIFY	Change wiki pages
WIKI_DELETE	Delete wiki pages and attachments
WIKI_ADMIN	All WIKI_* permissions, plus the management of readonly pages.

Others

TIMELINE_VIEW	View the timeline page
SEARCH_VIEW	View and execute search queries
CONFIG_VIEW	Enables additional pages on About Trac that show the current configuration or the list of installed plugins
EMAIL_VIEW	???

Granting Privileges

You grant privileges to users using trac-admin. The current set of privileges can be listed with the following command:

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

This command will allow the user bob to delete reports:

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

The permission add command also accepts multiple privilege names:

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

Or add all privileges:

  $ trac-admin /path/to/projenv permission add bob TRAC_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.
eg. if the "anonymous" group has permission WIKI_MODIFY, it's not necessary to add the WIKI_MODIFY permisison 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/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

Group membership can be checked by doing a permission list with no further arguments; the resulting output will include group memberships. Use lowercase for group names, as uppercase is 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/projenv permission add bob beta_testers
   $ trac-admin /path/to/projenv permission add beta_testers WIKI_ADMIN

Removing Permissions

Permissions can be removed using the 'remove' command. For example:

This command will prevent the user bob from deleting reports:

  $ trac-admin /path/to/projenv permission remove bob REPORT_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/projenv permission remove bob '*'

Or one privilege for all users:

  $ trac-admin /path/to/projenv permission remove '*' REPORT_ADMIN

Default Permissions

By default on a new Trac installation, the anonymous user will have view access to everything in Trac, and will also have permissions to create and modify tickets and wiki pages.

---

See also: TracAdmin, TracGuide and ​FineGrainedPermissions