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Configure Deny Policy Dominance for Starburst Trino

Overview

By default, when Apache Ranger evaluates policies for operations that use the _any access type (for example, SHOW TABLES, SHOW SCHEMAS), an allow policy takes precedence over a deny policy for the same resource.

This feature reverses that behavior — when enabled, an explicit deny policy overrides any matching allow policy. This is useful when you want to enforce fine-grained exclusions within a broadly permitted resource scope, such as hiding specific tables inside a schema that is otherwise fully accessible.

Default behavior

This feature is disabled by default. Allow policies dominate deny policies unless explicitly configured.

How It Works

Consider a Hive schema with the following Ranger policies:

Policy Type Scope
Policy 1 Allow All tables in the schema
Policy 2 Deny A subset of tables in the same schema

The outcome of a SHOW TABLES query depends on this setting:

Setting Outcome
"false" (default — allow dominates) All tables are listed, including those covered by the deny policy
"true" (deny dominates) All tables are listed except those explicitly denied in Policy 2

Configure the Setting

  1. SSH to the instance where Privacera is installed.

  2. Navigate to the Privacera Manager configuration directory:

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    cd ~/privacera/privacera-manager/config

  3. Open the Trino variables file for editing:

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    vi custom-vars/vars.trino-opensource.yml

  4. Uncomment and set the following property:

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    TRINO_RANGER_PLUGIN_OPTION_DENY_DOMINATES_IN_ANY: "true"

    Note

    • Set to "true" to enable deny-dominates behavior: an explicit deny policy takes precedence over an allow policy for access types set to _any (for example, SHOW TABLES).
    • Set to "false" (default) to retain allow-dominates behavior.

  5. Apply the configuration by running the Privacera Manager post-install commands:

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    cd ~/privacera/privacera-manager
./privacera-manager.sh post-install

  6. Now rebuild the image and redeploy the application.

Follow the steps below to configure deny policy dominance with the privacera-trino plugin on PrivaceraCloud for Starburst Trino.

  • Navigate to the privacera-starburst-trino-plugin directory, which contains all the Starburst Trino plugin deployment related files.

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    cd ~/privacera-starburst-trino-plugin
vi values.yaml

  • Add the following privacera_custom_env.sh entry under coordinator.etcFiles.other in the values.yaml file:

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    coordinator:
  etcFiles:
    other:
      privacera_custom_env.sh: |
        export RANGER_PLUGIN_OPTION_DENY_DOMINATES_IN_ANY="true"

Note

  • Set to "true" to enable deny-dominates behavior: an explicit deny policy takes precedence over an allow policy for access types set to _any (for example, SHOW TABLES).
  • Set to "false" (default) to retain allow-dominates behavior.
  • Once the property is configured, proceed with redeploying the Helm chart.

Verification

After applying the configuration, verify the setting on the Starburst Trino coordinator node:

  1. SSH into the Starburst Trino coordinator node.

  2. Run the following command to check both the Trino and Hive Ranger security configurations:

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    grep -R -A2 "policyengine.option.deny.dominates.in.any" /etc/starburst/ranger-conf/*.xml
    When enabled, you should see <value>true</value> for both properties:
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    /etc/starburst/ranger-conf/ranger-hive-privacera_hive-security.xml:    <name>ranger.plugin.hive.policyengine.option.deny.dominates.in.any</name>
/etc/starburst/ranger-conf/ranger-hive-privacera_hive-security.xml-    <value>true</value>
--
/etc/starburst/ranger-conf/ranger-trino-security.xml:    <name>ranger.plugin.trino.policyengine.option.deny.dominates.in.any</name>
/etc/starburst/ranger-conf/ranger-trino-security.xml-    <value>true</value>