Title

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system must be configured so that a separate file system is used for user home directories (such as /home or an equivalent). (Cat III impact)

Discussion

The use of separate file systems for different paths can protect the system from failures resulting from a file system becoming full or failing.

Check Content

Verify that a separate file system/partition has been created for non-privileged local interactive user home directories. Check the home directory assignment for all non-privileged users (those with a UID of 1000 or greater) on the system with the following command: # awk -F: '($3>=1000)&&($7 !~ /nologin/){print $1, $3, $6, $7}' /etc/passwd adamsj 1000 /home/adamsj /bin/bash jacksonm 1001 /home/jacksonm /bin/bash smithj 1002 /home/smithj /bin/bash The output of the command will give the directory/partition that contains the home directories for the non-privileged users on the system (in this example, /home) and users' shell. All accounts with a valid shell (such as /bin/bash) are considered interactive users. Check that a file system/partition has been created for the non-privileged interactive users with the following command: Note: The partition of /home is used in the example. # grep /home /etc/fstab UUID=333ada18 /home ext4 noatime,nobarrier,nodev 1 2 If a separate entry for the file system/partition that contains the non-privileged interactive users' home directories does not exist, this is a finding.

Fix Text

Migrate the "/home" directory onto a separate file system/partition.

Additional Identifiers

Rule ID: SV-204493r991589_rule

Vulnerability ID: V-204493

Group Title: SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227

Expert Comments

CCIs tied to check.

Controls tied to check. These are derived from the CCIs shown above.