Manual: apparmor_parser
APPARMOR_PARSER(8) AppArmor APPARMOR_PARSER(8)
NAME
apparmor_parser - loads AppArmor profiles into the kernel
SYNOPSIS
apparmor_parser [options] [profiles]...
apparmor_parser [options]
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
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.
-c[n], --zstd-compress-level=n
Compress the profile using the zstd algorithm at level n.
Where n can be on of:
none - disable compression, equivalent to 0
default - default apparmor preset compression level
fast - use a pre-chosen value that is fast
small - use a pre-chosen value that will result in better compression (slower)
0-22 - a number in the range 0-22, where 0 disables A compression level of 0 disables
compression entirely. Levels otherwise range up to 22, though levels of 20
and above (the 'ultra' levels) require significantly more memory and are much slower.
Policies can be loaded and stored in the kernel in compressed format. Using a higher level of compression, policy
can save both CPU time and memory, especially when compressed policies are retrieved from an existing cache.
If the compression level is unspecified, a default value of 10 is used. --zstd-compress-level values only affect
container compression unlike the --Optimize flag which adjusts multiple optimization parameters.
See also the optimization flag zstd-recompress.
--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.
zstd-recompress
Force recompression of the policy file if the compression level is higher than the currently cached file.
--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 .
SEE ALSO
apparmor(7), apparmor.d(5), aa_change_hat(2), and .
AppArmor 5.0.0~beta1 2026-04-08 APPARMOR_PARSER(8)