Deploying local-user-authenticator

What is local-user-authenticator?

The local-user-authenticator app is an identity provider used for integration testing and demos. If you would like to demo Pinniped, but you don't have a compatible identity provider handy, you can use Pinniped's local-user-authenticator identity provider. Note that this is not recommended for production use.

The local-user-authenticator is a Kubernetes Deployment which runs a webhook server that implements the Kubernetes Webhook Token Authentication interface.

User accounts can be created and edited dynamically using kubectl commands (see below).

Installing the Latest Version with Default Options

kubectl apply -f https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/pinniped/releases/latest/download/install-local-user-authenticator.yaml

Installing an Older Version with Default Options

Choose your preferred release version number and use it to replace the version number in the URL below.

# Replace v0.2.0 with your preferred version in the URL below
kubectl apply -f https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/pinniped/releases/download/v0.2.0/install-local-user-authenticator.yaml

Installing with Custom Options

Creating your own deployment YAML file requires ytt from Carvel to template the YAML files in the deploy-local-user-authenticator directory. Either install ytt or use the container image from Dockerhub.

git clone this repo and git checkout the release version tag of the release that you would like to deploy.
The configuration options are in deploy-local-user-authenticator/values.yml. Fill in the values in that file, or override those values using additional ytt command-line options in the command below. Use the release version tag as the image_tag value.
In a terminal, cd to this deploy-local-user-authenticator directory
To generate the final YAML files, run ytt --file .
Deploy the generated YAML using your preferred deployment tool, such as kubectl or kapp. For example: ytt --file . | kapp deploy --yes --app local-user-authenticator --diff-changes --file -

Configuring After Installing

Create Users

Use kubectl to create, edit, and delete user accounts by creating a Secret for each user account in the same namespace where local-user-authenticator is deployed. The name of the Secret resource is the username. Store the user's group membership and bcrypt encrypted password as the contents of the Secret. For example, to create a user named ryan with the password password123 who belongs to the groups group1 and group2, use:

kubectl create secret generic ryan \
  --namespace local-user-authenticator \
  --from-literal=groups=group1,group2 \
  --from-literal=passwordHash=$(htpasswd -nbBC 10 x password123 | sed -e "s/^x://")

Note that the above command requires a tool capable of generating a bcrypt hash. It uses htpasswd, which is installed on most macOS systems, and can be installed on some Linux systems via the apache2-utils package (e.g., apt-get install apache2-utils).

Get the local-user-authenticator App's Auto-Generated Certificate Authority Bundle

Fetch the auto-generated CA bundle for the local-user-authenticator's HTTP TLS endpoint.

kubectl get secret local-user-authenticator-tls-serving-certificate --namespace local-user-authenticator \
  -o jsonpath={.data.caCertificate} \
  | base64 -d \
  | tee /tmp/local-user-authenticator-ca

Configuring Pinniped to Use local-user-authenticator as an Identity Provider

When installing Pinniped on the same cluster, configure local-user-authenticator as an Identity Provider for Pinniped using the webhook URL https://local-user-authenticator.local-user-authenticator.svc/authenticate along with the CA bundle fetched by the above command. See doc/demo.md for an example.

Optional: Manually Testing the Webhook Endpoint After Installing

The following steps demonstrate the API of the local-user-authenticator app. Typically, a user would not need to interact with this API directly. Pinniped will automatically integrate with this API if the local-user-authenticator is configured as an identity provider for Pinniped.

Start a pod from which you can curl the endpoint from inside the cluster.

kubectl run curlpod --image=curlimages/curl --command -- /bin/sh -c "while true; do echo hi; sleep 120; done"

Copy the CA bundle that was fetched above onto the new pod.

kubectl cp /tmp/local-user-authenticator-ca curlpod:/tmp/local-user-authenticator-ca

Run a curl command to try to authenticate as the user created above.

kubectl -it exec curlpod -- curl https://local-user-authenticator.local-user-authenticator.svc/authenticate \
  --cacert /tmp/local-user-authenticator-ca \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -H 'Accept: application/json' -d '
{
  "apiVersion": "authentication.k8s.io/v1beta1",
  "kind": "TokenReview",
  "spec": {
    "token": "ryan:password123"
  }
}'

When authentication is successful the above command should return some JSON similar to the following. Note that the value of authenticated is true to indicate a successful authentication.

{"apiVersion":"authentication.k8s.io/v1beta1","kind":"TokenReview","status":{"authenticated":true,"user":{"username":"ryan","uid":"19c433ec-8f58-44ca-9ef0-2d1081ccb876","groups":["group1","group2"]}}}

Trying the above curl command again with the wrong username or password in the body of the request should result in a JSON response which indicates that the authentication failed.

{"apiVersion":"authentication.k8s.io/v1beta1","kind":"TokenReview","status":{"authenticated":false}}

Remove the curl pod.
```
kubectl delete pod curlpod
```

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