Table of Contents
Change the users authorized to connect to the application. You can define authorization level for each user
The credentials of a user are defined in the XML file
/opt/rudder/etc/rudder-users.xml. This file expects the following format:
<authentication hash="sha512"> <user name="alice" password="xxxxxxx" role="administrator"/> <user name="bob" password="xxxxxxx" role="administration_only, node_read"/> <user name="custom" password="xxxxxxx" role="node_read,node_write,configuration_read,rule_read,rule_edit,directive_read,technique_read"/> </authentication>
The name and password attributes are mandatory (non empty) for the user tags. The role attribute can be omitted but the user will have no permission, and only valid attributes are recognized.
Every modification of this file should be followed by a restart of the Rudder web application to be taken into account:
service rudder-jetty restart
The authentication tag should have a "hash" attribute, making "password" attributes on every user expect hashed passwords. Not specifying a hash attribute will fallback to plain text passwords, but it is strongly advised not to do so for security reasons.
The algorithm to be used to create the hash (and verify it during authentication) depend on the value of the hash attribute. The possible values, the corresponding algorithm and the Linux shell command need to obtain the hash of the "secret" password for this algorithm are listed here:
Table 9. Hashed passwords algorithms list
| Value | Algorithm | Linux command to hash the password |
|---|---|---|
"md5" | MD5 |
|
"sha" or "sha1" | SHA1 |
|
"sha256" or "sha-256" | SHA256 |
|
"sha512" or "sha-512" | SHA512 |
|
When using the suggested commands to hash a password, you must enter the command, then type your password, and hit return. The hash will then be displayed in your terminal. This avoids storing the password in your shell history.
Here is an example of authentication file with hashed password:
<authentication hash="sha256"> <!-- In this example, the hashed password is: "secret", hashed as a sha256 value --> <user name="carol" password="2bb80d537b1da3e38bd30361aa855686bde0eacd7162fef6a25fe97bf527a25b" role="administrator"/> </authentication>
If you are operating on a corporate network or want to have your users in a centralized database, you can enable LDAP authentication for Rudder users.
Take care of the following limitation of the current process: only authentication is delegated to LDAP, NOT authorizations. So you still have to declare user’s authorizations in the Rudder user file (rudder-users.xml).
A user whose authentication is accepted by LDAP but not declared in the rudder-users.xml file is considered to have no rights at all (and so will only see a reduced version of Rudder homepage, with no action nor tabs available).
The credentials of a user are defined in the XML file
/opt/rudder/etc/rudder-users.xml. It expects the same format as regular file-based
user login, but in this case "name" will be the login used to connect to LDAP and the
password field will be ignored and should be set to "LDAP" to make it clear that
this Rudder installation uses LDAP to log users in.
Every modification of this file should be followed by a restart of the Rudder web application to be taken into account:
service rudder-jetty restart
LDAP authentication is enabled by setting the property rudder.auth.ldap.enable to true
in file /opt/rudder/etc/rudder-web.properties
The LDAP authentication process is a bind/search/rebind in which an application connection (bind) is used to search (search) for a user entry given some base and filter parameters, and then, a bind (rebind) is tried on that entry with the credential provided by the user.
So next, you have to set-up the connection parameters to the LDAP directory to use. There are five properties to change:
- rudder.auth.ldap.connection.url
- rudder.auth.ldap.connection.bind.dn
- rudder.auth.ldap.connection.bind.password
- rudder.auth.ldap.searchbase
- rudder.auth.ldap.filter
The search base and filter are used to find the user. The search base may be left empty, and
Here are some usage examples,
on standard LDAP:
rudder.auth.ldap.searchbase=ou=People
rudder.auth.ldap.filter=(&(uid={0})(objectclass=person))
on Active Directory:
rudder.auth.ldap.searchbase=
rudder.auth.ldap.filter=(&(sAMAccountName={0})(objectclass=user))
For every user you can define an access level, allowing it to access different pages or to perform different actions depending on its level.
You can also build custom roles with whatever permission you want, using a type and a level as specified below.
In the xml file, the role attribute is a list of permissions/roles, separated by a comma. Each one adds permissions to the user. If one is wrong, or not correctly spelled, the user is set to the lowest rights (NoRights), having access only to the dashboard and nothing else.
Name | Access level |
administrator | All authorizations granted, can access and modify everything |
administration_only | Only access to administration part of rudder, can do everything within it. |
user | Can access and modify everything but the administration part |
configuration | Can only access and act on configuration section |
read_only | Can access to every read only part, can perform no action |
inventory | Access to information about nodes, can see their inventory, but can’t act on them |
rule_only | Access to information about rules, but can’t modify them |
For each user you can define more than one role, each role adding its authorization to the user.
Example: "rule_only,administration_only" will only give access to the "Administration" tab as well as the Rules.
You can set a custom set of permissions instead of a pre-defined role.
A permission is composed of a type and a level:
-
Type: Indicates what kind of data will be displayed and/or can be set/updated by the user
- "configuration", "rule", "directive", "technique", "node", "group", "administration", "deployment".
-
Level: Access level to be granted on the related type
- "read", "write", "edit", "all" (Can read, write, and edit)
Depending on that value(s) you give, the user will have access to different pages and action in Rudder.
Usage example:
- configuration_read → Will give read access to the configuration (Rule management, Directives and Parameters)
- rule_write, node_read → Will give read and write access to the Rules and read access to the Nodes
Rudder aims at integrating with your IT system transparently, so it can’t force its own authentication system.
To meet this need, Rudder relies on the modular authentication system Spring Security that allows to easily integrate with databases or an enterprise SSO like CAS, OpenID or SPNEGO. The documentation for this integration is not yet available, but don’t hesitate to reach us on this topic.
