Open ID Connect (OIDC)

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 authenticate using an OIDC authentication provider. To enable this, you will need to configure both StackState and the OIDC provider to be able to talk to each other. The following sections describe the respective setups.

Configure the OIDC provider

Before you can configure StackState to authenticate using OIDC, you need to create a client for StackState on your OIDC provider. Use the following settings for the client (if needed by the OIDC provider):

Use the OIDCAuthoirzation Flow
Set the Redirect URI to the base URL of StackState suffixed with /loginCallback. For example https://stackstate.acme.com/loginCallback. For some OIDC providers, such as Google, the Redirect URI must match exactly, including any query parameters. In that case, you should configure the URI like this https://stackstate.acme.com/loginCallback?client_name=StsOidcClient.
Give StackState access to at least the scopes openid and email or the equivalent of these for your OIDC provider.
StackState needs OIDC offline access. For some identity providers, this requires an extra scope, usually called offline_access.

The result of this configuration should produce a clientId and a secret. Copy those and keep them around for configuring StackState. Also write down the discoveryUri of the provider. Usually this is either in the same screen or can be found in the documentation.

Configure StackState for OIDC

Kubernetes

To configure StackState to use an OIDC authentication provider on Kubernetes, OIDC details and user role mapping needs to be added to the file authentication.yaml. For example:

stackstate:
  authentication:
    oidc:
      clientId: "<client-id-from-oidc-provider>"
      secret: "<secret-from-oidc-provider>"
      discoveryUri: "https://oidc.acme.com/.well-known/openid-configuration"
      jwsAlgorithm: RS256
      scope: ["openid", "email"]
      jwtClaims:
        usernameField: email
        groupsField: groups

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

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

In authentication.yaml - add details of the OIDC authentication provider (see the example above):
- clientId - The ID of the OIDC client you created for StackState.
- secret - The secret for the OIDC client you created for StackState
- discoveryUri - URI that can be used to discover the OIDC provider. Normally also documented or returned when creating the client in the OIDC provider.
- jwsAlgorithm - The default for OIDC is RS256. If your OIDC provider uses a different one, it can be set here.
- scope - Should match, or be a subset of, the scope provided in the OIDC provider configuration. StackState uses this to request access to these parts of a user profile in the OIDC provider.
- redirectUri - Optional (not in the example): The URI where the login callback endpoint of StackState is reachable. Populated by default using the stackstate.baseUrl, but can be overridden. This must be a fully qualified URL that points to the /loginCallback path.
- jwtClaims -
  - usernameField - The field in the OIDC user profile that should be used as the username. By default this will be the preferred_username, however, many providers omit this field. A good alternative is email.
  - groupsField - The field from which StackState will read the role/group for a user.
In authentication.yaml - map user roles from OIDC to the correct StackState subjects using the roles.guest, roles.powerUser or roles.admin settings (see the example above). 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 file from the StackState installation instructions.

Run a Helm upgrade to apply the changes:

helm upgrade \
  --install \
  --namespace stackstate \
  --values values.yaml \
  --values authentication.yaml \
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 use an OIDC authentication provider on Linux, OIDC details and user role mapping needs to be added to the file application_stackstate.conf. This should replace the existing authentication section that is nested in stackstate.api. For example:

authentication {
  enabled  = true

  authServer {
    authServerType = [ "oidcAuthServer" ]

    oidcAuthServer {
      clientId = "<client-id-from-oidc-provider>"
      secret = "<secret-from-oidc-provider>"
      discoveryUri = "https://oidc.acme.com/.well-known/openid-configuration"
      jwsAlgorithm = RS256
      scope = ["openid", "email"]
      redirectUri = "https://stackstate.acme.com/loginCallback"
      jwtClaims {
        usernameField = email
        groupsField = groups
      }
    }
  }

  // map the groups from the OIDC provider to the
  // 3 standard subjects in StackState (guestGroups, powerUserGroups and adminGroups)
  guestGroups = ["oidc-guest-role-for-stackstate"]
  powerUserGroups = ["oidc-power-user-role-for-stackstate"]
  adminGroups = ["oidc-admin-role-for-stackstate"]
}

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

In application_stackstate.conf - add details of the OIDC authentication provider (see the example above). This should replace the existing authentication section that is nested in stackstate.api:
- clientId - The ID of the OIDC client you created for StackState.
- secret - The secret for the OIDC client you created for StackState
- discoveryUri - URI that can be used to discover the OIDC provider. Normally also documented or returned when creating the client in the OIDC provider.
- jwsAlgorithm - The default for OIDC is RS256. If your OIDC provider uses a different one, it can be set here.
- scope - Should match, or be a subset of, the scope provided in the OIDC provider configuration. StackState uses this to request access to these parts of a user profile in the OIDC provider.
- redirectUri - The URI where the login callback endpoint of StackState is reachable. This must be a fully qualified URL that points to the /loginCallback path.
- jwtClaims -
  - usernameField - The field in the OIDC user profile that should be used as the username. By default this will be the preferred_username, however, many providers omit this field. A good alternative is email.
  - groupsField - The field from which StackState will read the role/group for a user.
In application_stackstate.conf - map user roles from OIDC to the correct StackState subjects using the guestGroups, powerUserGroups or adminGroups settings (see the example above). For details, see the default StackState roles. More StackState roles can also be created, see the RBAC documentation.
Restart StackState to apply the changes.

Additional settings for specific OIDC providers

This section contains additional settings needed for specific OIDC providers.

Microsoft Identity Platform

To authenticate StackState via OIDC with the Microsoft Identity Platform, the additional scope offline_access needs to be granted and requested during authentication.

In Microsoft Azure, approve the permission "Maintain access to data you have given it access to" on the consent page of the authorization code flow.

In the StackState configuration described above, add the scope offline_access, in addition to openid and email. For example:

jwsAlgorithm: RS256
      scope: ["openid", "email", "offline_access"]
      jwtClaims:
        usernameField: preferred_username
        groupsField: groups

For further details, see Permissions and consent in the Microsoft identity platform (docs.microsoft.com).