SSSD(8) SSSD Manual pages SSSD(8)
NAME
sssd - System Security Services Daemon
SYNOPSIS
sssd [options]
DESCRIPTION
SSSD provides a set of daemons to manage access to remote directories
and authentication mechanisms. It provides an NSS and PAM interface
toward the system and a pluggable backend system to connect to multiple
different account sources as well as D-Bus interface. It is also the
basis to provide client auditing and policy services for projects like
FreeIPA. It provides a more robust database to store local users as
well as extended user data.
OPTIONS
-d,--debug-level LEVEL
SSSD supports two representations for specifying the debug level.
The simplest is to specify a decimal value from 0-9, which
represents enabling that level and all lower-level debug messages.
The more comprehensive option is to specify a hexadecimal bitmask
to enable or disable specific levels (such as if you wish to
suppress a level).
Please note that each SSSD service logs into its own log file. Also
please note that enabling “debug_level” in the “[sssd]” section
only enables debugging just for the sssd process itself, not for
the responder or provider processes. The “debug_level” parameter
should be added to all sections that you wish to produce debug logs
from.
In addition to changing the log level in the config file using the
“debug_level” parameter, which is persistent, but requires SSSD
restart, it is also possible to change the debug level on the fly
using the sss_debuglevel(8) tool.
Currently supported debug levels:
0, 0x0010: Fatal failures. Anything that would prevent SSSD from
starting up or causes it to cease running.
1, 0x0020: Critical failures. An error that doesn't kill SSSD, but
one that indicates that at least one major feature is not going to
work properly.
2, 0x0040: Serious failures. An error announcing that a particular
request or operation has failed.
3, 0x0080: Minor failures. These are the errors that would
percolate down to cause the operation failure of 2.
4, 0x0100: Configuration settings.
5, 0x0200: Function data.
6, 0x0400: Trace messages for operation functions.
7, 0x1000: Trace messages for internal control functions.
8, 0x2000: Contents of function-internal variables that may be
interesting.
9, 0x4000: Extremely low-level tracing information.
9, 0x20000: Performance and statistical data, please note that due
to the way requests are processed internally the logged execution
time of a request might be longer than it actually was.
10, 0x10000: Even more low-level libldb tracing information. Almost
never really required.
To log required bitmask debug levels, simply add their numbers
together as shown in following examples:
Example: To log fatal failures, critical failures, serious failures
and function data use 0x0270.
Example: To log fatal failures, configuration settings, function
data, trace messages for internal control functions use 0x1310.
Note: The bitmask format of debug levels was introduced in 1.7.0.
Default: 0x0070 (i.e. fatal, critical and serious failures;
corresponds to setting 2 in decimal notation)
--debug-timestamps=mode
1: Add a timestamp to the debug messages
0: Disable timestamp in the debug messages
Default: 1
--debug-microseconds=mode
1: Add microseconds to the timestamp in debug messages
0: Disable microseconds in timestamp
Default: 0
--logger=value
Location where SSSD will send log messages.
stderr: Redirect debug messages to standard error output.
files: Redirect debug messages to the log files. By default, the
log files are stored in /var/log/sssd and there are separate log
files for every SSSD service and domain.
journald: Redirect debug messages to systemd-journald
Default: not set (fall back to journald if available, otherwise to
stderr)
-D,--daemon
Become a daemon after starting up.
-i,--interactive
Run in the foreground, don't become a daemon.
-c,--config
Specify a non-default config file. The default is
/etc/sssd/sssd.conf. For reference on the config file syntax and
options, consult the sssd.conf(5) manual page.
-g,--genconf
Do not start the SSSD, but refresh the configuration database from
the contents of /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and exit.
-s,--genconf-section
Similar to “--genconf”, but only refresh a single section from the
configuration file. This option is useful mainly to be called from
systemd unit files to allow socket-activated responders to refresh
their configuration without requiring the administrator to restart
the whole SSSD.
-?,--help
Display help message and exit.
--version
Print version number and exit.
SIGNALS
SIGTERM/SIGINT
Informs the SSSD to gracefully terminate all of its child processes
and then shut down the monitor.
SIGHUP
Tells the SSSD to stop writing to its current debug file
descriptors and to close and reopen them. This is meant to
facilitate log rolling with programs like logrotate.
SIGUSR1
Tells the SSSD to simulate offline operation for the duration of
the “offline_timeout” parameter. This is useful for testing. The
signal can be sent to either the sssd process or any sssd_be
process directly.
SIGUSR2
Tells the SSSD to go online immediately. This is useful for
testing. The signal can be sent to either the sssd process or any
sssd_be process directly.
NOTES
If the environment variable SSS_NSS_USE_MEMCACHE is set to "NO", client
applications will not use the fast in-memory cache.
If the environment variable SSS_LOCKFREE is set to "NO", requests from
multiple threads of a single application will be serialized.
SEE ALSO
sssd(8), sssd.conf(5), sssd-ldap(5), sssd-krb5(5), sssd-simple(5),
sssd-ipa(5), sssd-ad(5), sssd-files(5), sssd-sudo(5), sssd-session-
recording(5), sss_cache(8), sss_debuglevel(8), sss_obfuscate(8),
sss_seed(8), sssd_krb5_locator_plugin(8), sss_ssh_authorizedkeys(8),
sss_ssh_knownhostsproxy(8), sssd-ifp(5), pam_sss(8). sss_rpcidmapd(5)
sssd-systemtap(5)
AUTHORS
The SSSD upstream - https://github.com/SSSD/sssd/
SSSD 02/09/2025 SSSD(8)
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