APPARMOR_PARSER(8) AppArmor APPARMOR_PARSER(8)
NAME
apparmor_parser - loads AppArmor profiles into the kernel
SYNOPSIS
apparmor_parser [options] <command> [profiles]...
apparmor_parser [options] <command>
apparmor_parser [-hv] [--help] [--version]
DESCRIPTION
apparmor_parser is used as a general tool to compile, and manage
AppArmor policy, including loading new apparmor.d(5) profiles into the
Linux kernel.
AppArmor profiles restrict the operations available to processes.
The profiles are loaded into the Linux kernel by the apparmor_parser
program. The profiles may be specified by file name or a directory name
containing a set of profiles. If a directory is specified then the
apparmor_parser will try to do a profile load for each file in the
directory that is not a dot file, or explicitly black listed
(*.dpkg-new, *.dpkg-old, *.dpkg-dist, *.dpkg-bak, *.dpkg-remove,
*.pacsave, *.pacnew, *.rpmnew, *.rpmsave, *.orig, *.rej, *~). The
apparmor_parser will fall back to taking input from standard input if a
profile or directory is not supplied.
The input supplied to apparmor_parser should be in the format described
in apparmor.d(5).
COMMANDS
The command set is broken into four subcategories.
unprivileged commands
Commands that don't require any privilege and don't operate on
profiles.
unprivileged profile commands
Commands that operate on a profile either specified on the command
line or read from stdin if no profile was specified.
privileged commands
Commands that require the MAC_ADMIN capability within the affected
AppArmor namespace to load policy into the kernel or filesystem
write permissions to update the affected privileged files (cache
etc).
privileged profile commands
Commands that require privilege and operate on profiles.
Unprivileged commands
-V, --version
Print the version number and exit.
-h, --help
Give a quick reference guide.
Unprivileged profile commands
-N, --names
Produce a list of policies from a given set of profiles (implies
-K).
-p, --preprocess
Apply preprocessing to the input profile(s) by flattening includes
into the output profile and dump to stdout.
-S, --stdout
Writes a binary (cached) profile to stdout (implies -K and -T).
-o file, --ofile file
Writes a binary (cached) profile to the specified file (implies -K
and -T)
Privileged commands
--purge-cache
Unconditionally clear out cached profiles.
Privileged profile commands
-a, --add
Insert the AppArmor definitions given into the kernel. This is the
default action. This gives an error message if a AppArmor definition
by the same name already exists in the kernel, or if the parser
doesn't understand its input. It reports when an addition succeeded.
-r, --replace
This flag is required if an AppArmor definition by the same name
already exists in the kernel; used to replace the definition already
in the kernel with the definition given on standard input.
-R, --remove
This flag is used to remove an AppArmor definition already in the
kernel. Note that it still requires a complete AppArmor definition
as described in apparmor.d(5) even though the contents of the
definition aren't used.
OPTIONS
-B, --binary
Treat the profile files specified on the command line (or stdin if
none specified) as binary cache files, produced with the -S or -o
options, and load to the kernel as specified by -a, -r, and -R
(implies -K and -T).
-C, --Complain
Force the profile to load in complain mode.
-b n, --base n
Set the base directory for resolving #include directives defined as
relative paths.
-I n, --Include n
Add element n to the search path when resolving #include directives
defined as an absolute paths.
-f n, --apparmorfs n
Set the location of the apparmor security filesystem (default is
"/sys/kernel/security/apparmor").
--policy-features n
Specify the feature set that the policy was developed under. This
does not override feature ABI rules.
--override-policy-abi n
Specify the feature set that the policy was developed under and
override any feature ABI rules that the policy may be using.
--kernel-features n
Specify the feature set of the kernel that the policy is being
compiled for. If not specified this will be determined by the
system's kernel.
-M n, --features-file n
Use the features file located at path "n" (default is
/etc/apparmor.d/cache/.features). If the --cache-loc option is
present, the ".features" file in the specified cache directory is
used.
Note: this sets both the --kernel-features and --policy-features to
be the same.
-m n, --match-string n
Only use match features "n".
Note: this sets both the --kernel-features and --policy-features to
be the same.
-n n, --namespace-string n
Force a profile to load in the namespace "n".
-X, --readimpliesX
In the case of profiles that are loading on systems were
READ_IMPLIES_EXEC is set in the kernel for a given process, load the
profile so that any "r" flags are processed as "mr".
-k, --show-cache
Report the cache processing (hit/miss details) when loading or
saving cached profiles.
-K, --skip-cache
Perform no caching at all: disables -W, implies -T.
-T, --skip-read-cache
By default, if a profile's cache is found in the location specified
by --cache-loc and the timestamp is newer than the profile, it will
be loaded from the cache. This option disables this cache loading
behavior.
-W, --write-cache
Write out cached profiles to the location specified in --cache-loc.
Off by default. In cases where abstractions have been changed, and
the parser is running with "--replace", it may make sense to also
use "--skip-read-cache" with the "--write-cache" option.
--skip-bad-cache
Skip updating the cache if it contains cached profiles in a bad or
inconsistent state
-L, --cache-loc
Set the location(s) of the cache directory. This option can accept a
comma separated list of directories, which will be searched in order
to find a matching cache. The first matching cache file found is
used even if a directory later in the search order may contain a
newer cache file.
If multiple directories are specified and --write-cache has been
specified then cache writes will be made to the first directory in
the list, all other directories will be treated as read only.
If a cache directory name needs to have a comma as part of the name,
it can be specified by using a backslash to escape the comma
character in the directory name.
If not specified the cache location defaults to /var/cache/apparmor
--print-cache-dir
Print the cache directory location. This path will be a subdirectory
of the directory specified by --cache-loc. The subdirectory used
will be influenced by the features available in the currently
running kernel or by the features specified with the --match-string
or --features-file options.
-Q, --skip-kernel-load
Perform all actions except the actual loading of a profile into the
kernel. This is useful for testing profile generation, caching,
etc, without making changes to the running kernel profiles.
This also removes the need for privilege to execute the commands
that manage policy in the kernel
-q, --quiet
Do not report on the profiles as they are loaded, and not show
warnings.
-v, --verbose
Report on the profiles as they are loaded, and show warnings.
--warn=n
Enable various warnings during policy compilation. A single warn
flag can be specified per --warn option, but the --warn flag can be
passed multiple times.
apparmor_parser --warn=rule-not-enforced ...
A specific warning can be disabled by prepending no- to the flag
apparmor_parser --warn=no-rule-not-enforced ...
Use --help=warn to see a full list of which warn flags are
supported.
--Werror[=n]
Convert warnings into errors during policy compilation. If the
optional flag is not specified all warnings become errors. If the
optional flag is specified only the class of warnings specified will
become errors. A single flag can be specified per --Werror option,
but the --Werror flag can be passed multiple times.
apparmor_parser --Werror=deprecated ...
Use --help=warn or --help=Werror to see a full list of which warn
flags are supported.
-d, --debug
Given once, only checks the profiles to ensure syntactic
correctness. Given twice, dumps its interpretation of the profile
for checking.
-D n, --dump=n
Debug flag for dumping various structures and passes of policy
compilation. A single dump flag can be specified per --dump option,
but the dump flag can be passed multiple times. Note progress flags
tend to also imply the matching stats flag.
apparmor_parser --dump=dfa-stats --dump=trans-stats <file>
Use --help=dump to see a full list of which dump flags are supported
-j n, --jobs=n
Set the number of jobs used to compile the specified policy. Where n
can be
0 - disable jobs and use the main process for all compilation
# - a specific number of jobs
auto - the # of cpus in the in the system
x# - # * number of cpus
Eg.
-j8 OR --jobs=8 allows for 8 parallel jobs
-jauto OR --jobs=auto sets the jobs to the # of
cpus
-jx4 OR --jobs=x4 sets the jobs to # of cpus *
4
-jx1 is equivalent to -jauto
The default value is the number of cpus in the system. Note that if
jobs is a positive integer number the --jobs-max parameter is
automatically set to the same value.
--max-jobs n
When --jobs is set to a scaling value (ie. auto or xN) the specify a
hard cap on the value that can be specified by the --jobs flag. It
takes the same set of options available to the --jobs option, and
defaults to 8*cpus
-O n, --optimize=n
Set the optimization flags used by policy compilation. A single
optimization flag can be toggled per -O option, but the optimize
flag can be passed multiple times. Turning off some phases of the
optimization can make it so that policy can't complete compilation
due to size constraints (it is entirely possible to create a dfa
with millions of states that will take days or longer to compile).
Note: The parser is set to use a balanced default set of flags, that
will result in reasonable compression but not take excessive amounts
of time to complete.
Use --help=optimize to see a full list of which optimization flags
are supported.
--abort-on-error Abort processing of profiles on the first error
encountered, otherwise the parser will continue to try to compile other
profiles if specified.
Note: If an error is encountered while processing profiles the last
error encountered will be used to set the exit code.
--skip-bad-cache-rebuild The default behavior of the parser is to check
if a cached version of a profile exists and if it does it attempt to
load it into the kernel. If that load is rejected, then the parser will
attempt to rebuild the cache file, and load again.
This option tells the parser to not attempt to rebuild the cache on
failure, instead the parser continues on with processing the
remaining profiles.
--estimated-compile-size Adjust the internal parameter used to estimate
how aggressive the parser can be when compiling policy. This may include
changes to how or when caches are dropped or how many compile units
(jobs) are launched. The value should slightly larger than the largest
Resident Set Size (RSS) encountered for the type of policy being
compiled.
A value that is too small may result in the parser exhausting system
resources when compiling large policy. A value too large may slow
policy compiles down.
The value specified may include a suffix of KB, MB, GB, to make it
easier to adjust the size.
Note: config-file and command line options will override values
chosen by tuning affected by the option.
--config-file
Specify the config file to use instead of /etc/apparmor/parser.conf.
This option will be processed early before regular options
regardless of the order it is specified in.
--print-config-file
Print the config file location that will be used.
CONFIG FILE
An optional config file /etc/apparmor/parser.conf can be used to specify
the default options for the parser, which then can be overridden using
the command line options.
The config file ignores leading whitespace and treats lines that begin
with # as comments. Config options are specified one per line using the
same format as the longform command line options (without the preceding
--).
Eg.
#comment
optimize=no-expr-tree
optimize=compress-fast
As with the command line some options accumulate and others override,
ie. when there are conflicting versions of switch the last option is the
one chosen.
Eg.
Optimize=no-minimize
Optimize=minimize
would result in Optimize=minimize being set.
The Include, Dump, and Optimize options accumulate except for the
inversion option (no-X vs. X), and a couple options that work by
setting/clearing multiple options (compress-small). In that case the
option will override the flags it sets but will may accumulate with
others.
All other options override previously set values.
BUGS
If you find any bugs, please report them at
<https://gitlab.com/apparmor/apparmor/-/issues>.
SEE ALSO
apparmor(7), apparmor.d(5), aa_change_hat(2), and
<https://wiki.apparmor.net>.
AppArmor 4.1.0 2025-04-10 APPARMOR_PARSER(8)
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