LDAP

This page describes StackState version 4.2.

The StackState 4.2 version range is End of Life (EOL) and no longer supported. We encourage customers still running the 4.2 version range to upgrade to a more recent release.

Go to the documentation for the latest StackState release.

Overview

StackState can use an LDAP server (including AD) to authenticate against and to get roles/groups from. It does require a running LDAP server that is accessible to StackState.

The LDAP main directory and all subdirectories will be checked for user files. The bind credentials in the StackState configuration are used to authenticate StackState on the LDAP server. After authentication, StackState passes the top LDAP directory name for the user that wants to log in to StackState.

Configure StackState for LDAP

Kubernetes

To configure StackState to authenticate using an LDAP authentication server on Kubernetes, LDAP details and user role mapping needs to be added to the file authentication.yaml. For example:

stackstate:
  authentication:
    ldap:
      host: sts-ldap
      port: 10389 # For most LDAP servers 389 for plain, 636 for ssl connections
      #ssl:
      #  sslType: ssl
      #  trustStore: <see below>
      #  trustCertificates <see below>
      bind:
        dn: "cn=admin,ou=employees,dc=acme,dc=com"
        password: "password"
      userQuery:
        parameters:
          - ou: employees
          - dc: acme
          - dc: com
        usernameKey: cn
        emailKey: mail
      groupQuery:
        parameters:
          - ou: groups
          - dc: acme
          - dc: com
        rolesKey: cn
        groupMemberKey: member

    # map the groups from LDAP to the 
    # 3 standard subjects in StackState (guest, powerUser and admin)
    roles:
      guest: ["ldap-guest-role-for-stackstate"]
      powerUser: ["ldap-power-user-role-for-stackstate"]
      admin: ["ldap-admin-role-for-stackstate"]

Follow the steps below to configure StackState to authenticate using LDAP:

In authentication.yaml - add LDAP details (see the example above):
- host - The hostname of the LDAP server.
- port - The port the LDAP server is listening on.
- sslType - Optional. The type of LDAP secure connection ssl or startTls. Omit if plain LDAP connection is used.
- trustCertificates - Optional, certificate file for SSL. Formats PEM, DER and PKCS7 are supported.
- trustStore - Optional, Java trust store file for SSL. If both trustCertificates and trustStore are specified, trustCertificatesPath takes precedence.
- bind - Optional, used to authenticate StackState to LDAP server if the LDAP server does not support anonymous LDAP searches.
- userQuery parameters and groupQuery parameters - The set of parameters inside correspond to the base dn of your LDAP where users and groups can be found. The first one is used for authenticating users in StackState, while the second is used for retrieving the group of that user to determine if the user is an Administrator, Power User or a Guest.
- usernameKey - The name of the attribute that stores the username, value is matched against the username provided on the login screen.
- emailKey - The name of the attribute that is used as the email address in StackState.
- rolesKey - The name of the attribute that stores the group name.
- groupMemberKey - The name of the attribute that indicates whether a user is a member of a group. The constructed LDAP filter follows this pattern: <groupMemberKey>=<user.dn>,ou=groups,dc=acme,dc=com.
In authentication.yaml - map user roles from LDAP to the correct StackState subjects (see the example above):
- roles - for details, see the default StackState roles. More StackState roles can also be created, see the RBAC documentation.
Store the file authentication.yaml together with the values.yaml from the StackState installation instructions.
Run a Helm upgrade to apply the changes. If you are using SSL with custom certificates, the binary certificate files that should be used when connecting to LDAP should be set from the command line, use the command under SSL with custom certificates:

helm upgrade \
  --install \
  --namespace stackstate \
  --values values.yaml \
  --values authentication.yaml \
stackstate \
stackstate/stackstate

trustCertificates

helm upgrade \
  --install \
  --namespace stackstate \
  --values values.yaml \
  --values authentication.yaml \
  --set-file stackstate.authentication.ldap.ssl.trustCertificates=./ldap-certificate.pem \
stackstate \
stackstate/stackstate

trustStore

helm upgrade \
  --install \
  --namespace stackstate \
  --values values.yaml \
  --values authentication.yaml \
  --set-file stackstate.authentication.ldap.ssl.trustStore=./ldap-cacerts \
stackstate \
stackstate/stackstate

Note:

The first run of the helm upgrade command will result in pods restarting, which may cause a short interruption of availability.
Include authentication.yaml on every helm upgrade run.
The authentication configuration is stored as a Kubernetes secret.

Linux

To configure StackState to authenticate using an LDAP authentication server on Kubernetes, LDAP details and user role mapping needs to be added to the file application_stackstate.conf. For example:

authentication {
  authServer {
    authServerType = [ "ldapAuthServer" ]

    ldapAuthServer {
      connection {
        host = localhost
        port = 8000
        # ssl {
        #    sslType = ssl
        #    trustCertificatesPath = "/var/lib/ssl/sts-ldap.pem"
        #    trustStorePath = "/var/lib/ssl/cacerts"
        # }
        bindCredentials {
           dn = "cn=admin,ou=employees,dc=acme,dc=com"
           password = "password"
         }
      }
      userQuery {
        parameters = [
          { ou : employees }
          { dc : acme }
          { dc : com }
        ]
        usernameKey = cn
        emailKey = mail
      }
      groupQuery {
        parameters = [
          { ou : groups }
          { dc : acme }
          { dc : com }
        ]
        rolesKey = cn
        groupMemberKey = member
      }
    }
  }

  // map the groups from the LDAP to the 
  // 3 standard subjects in StackState (guest, powerUser and admin)
  guestGroups = ["ldap-guest-role-for-stackstate"]
  powerUserGroups = ["ldap-powerUser-role-for-stackstate"]
  adminGroups = ["ldap-admin-role-for-stackstate"]
}