Authentication

OpenStackClient leverages python-keystoneclient authentication plugins to support a number of different authentication methods.

Authentication Process

The user provides some number of authentication credential options. If an authentication type is not provided (--os-auth-type), the authentication options are examined to determine if one of the default types can be used. If no match is found an error is reported and OSC exits.

Note that the authentication call to the Identity service has not yet occurred. It is deferred until the last possible moment in order to reduce the number of unnecessary queries to the server, such as when further processing detects an invalid command.

Authentication Plugins

The Keystone client library implements the base set of plugins. Additional plugins may be available from the Keystone project or other sources.

There are at least three authentication types that are always available:

  • Password: A project, username and password are used to identify the user. An optional domain may also be included. This is the most common type and is the default any time a username is supplied. An authentication URL for the Identity service is also required. [Required: --os-auth-url, --os-project-name, --os-username; Optional: --os-password]

  • Token: This is slightly different from the usual token authentication (described below as token/endpoint) in that a token and an authentication URL are supplied and the plugin retrieves a new token. [Required: --os-auth-url, --os-token]

  • Others: Other authentication plugins such as SAML, Kerberos, and OAuth1.0 are under development and also supported. To use them, they must be selected by supplying the --os-auth-type option.

Detailed Process

The authentication process in OpenStackClient is all contained in and handled by the ClientManager object.

  • On import api.auth:

    • obtains the list of installed Keystone authentication plugins from the keystoneclient.auth.plugin entry point.

    • builds a list of authentication options from the plugins.

  • The command line arguments are processed and a configuration is loaded from clouds.yaml if --os-cloud is provided.

  • A new ClientManager is created and supplied with the set of options from the command line, environment and/or clouds.yaml:

    • If --os-auth-type is provided and is a valid and available plugin

      it is used.

    • If --os-auth-type is not provided an authentication plugin is selected based on the existing options. This is a short-circuit evaluation, the first match wins.

      • If --os-username is supplied password is selected

      • If --os-token is supplied token is selected

      • If no selection has been made by now exit with error

    • Load the selected plugin class.

  • When an operation that requires authentication is attempted ClientManager makes the actual initial request to the Identity service.

    • if --os-auth-url is not supplied for any of the types except Token/Endpoint, exit with an error.

Authenticating using Identity Server API v3

To authenticate against an Identity Server API v3, the OS_IDENTITY_API_VERSION environment variable or --os-identity-api-version option must be changed to 3, instead of the default 2.0. Similarly OS_AUTH_URL or os-auth-url should also be updated.

$ export OS_IDENTITY_API_VERSION=3 (Defaults to 2.0)
$ export OS_AUTH_URL=http://localhost:5000/v3

Since Identity API v3 authentication is a bit more complex, there are additional options that may be set, either as command line options or environment variables. The most common case will be a user supplying both user name and password, along with the project name; previously in v2.0 this would be sufficient, but since the Identity API v3 has a Domain component, we need to tell the client in which domain the user and project exists.

If using a user name and password to authenticate, specify either it’s owning domain name or ID.

  • --os-user-domain-name or OS_USER_DOMAIN_NAME

  • --os-user-domain-id or OS_USER_DOMAIN_ID

If using a project name as authorization scope, specify either it’s owning domain name or ID.

  • --os-project-domain-name or OS_PROJECT_DOMAIN_NAME

  • --os-project-domain-id or OS_PROJECT_DOMAIN_ID

If using a domain as authorization scope, set either it’s name or ID.

  • --os-domain-name or OS_DOMAIN_NAME

  • --os-domain-id or OS_DOMAIN_ID

Note that if the user and project share the same domain, then simply setting --os-default-domain or OS_DEFAULT_DOMAIN to the domain ID is sufficient.

Thus, a minimal set of environment variables would be:

$ export OS_IDENTITY_API_VERSION=3
$ export OS_AUTH_URL=http://localhost:5000/v3
$ export OS_DEFAULT_DOMAIN=default
$ export OS_USERNAME=admin
$ export OS_PASSWORD=secret
$ export OS_PROJECT_NAME=admin

Federated users support

The OpenStackClient also allows the use of Federated users to log in. It enables one to use the identity providers credentials such as Google or Facebook to log in the OpenStackClient instead of using the Keystone credentials.

This is useful in a Federated environment where one credential give access to many applications/services that the Federation supports. To check how to configure the OpenStackClient to allow Federated users to log in, please check the Authentication using federation.