Chapter 10. LDAP Authentication Setup for Red Hat Quay

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is an open, vendor-neutral, industry standard application protocol for accessing and maintaining distributed directory information services over an Internet Protocol (IP) network. Red Hat Quay supports using LDAP as an identity provider.

10.1. Considerations when enabling LDAP

Prior to enabling LDAP for your Red Hat Quay deployment, you should consider the following.

Existing Red Hat Quay deployments

Conflicts between usernames can arise when you enable LDAP for an existing Red Hat Quay deployment that already has users configured. For example, one user, alice, was manually created in Red Hat Quay prior to enabling LDAP. If the username alice also exists in the LDAP directory, Red Hat Quay automatically creates a new user, alice-1, when alice logs in for the first time using LDAP. Red Hat Quay then automatically maps the LDAP credentials to the alice account. For consistency reasons, this might be erroneous for your Red Hat Quay deployment. It is recommended that you remove any potentially conflicting local account names from Red Hat Quay prior to enabling LDAP.

Manual User Creation and LDAP authentication

When Red Hat Quay is configured for LDAP, LDAP-authenticated users are automatically created in Red Hat Quay’s database on first log in, if the configuration option FEATURE_USER_CREATION is set to true. If this option is set to false, the automatic user creation for LDAP users fails, and the user is not allowed to log in. In this scenario, the superuser needs to create the desired user account first. Conversely, if FEATURE_USER_CREATION is set to true, this also means that a user can still create an account from the Red Hat Quay login screen, even if there is an equivalent user in LDAP.

10.2. Configuring LDAP for Red Hat Quay

You can configure LDAP for Red Hat Quay by updating your config.yaml file directly and restarting your deployment. Use the following procedure as a reference when configuring LDAP for Red Hat Quay.

  1. Update your config.yaml file directly to include the following relevant information: 

    # ...
AUTHENTICATION_TYPE: LDAP 1
# ...
LDAP_ADMIN_DN: uid=<name>,ou=Users,o=<organization_id>,dc=<example_domain_component>,dc=com 2
LDAP_ADMIN_PASSWD: ABC123 3
LDAP_ALLOW_INSECURE_FALLBACK: false 4
LDAP_BASE_DN: 5
    - o=<organization_id>
    - dc=<example_domain_component>
    - dc=com
LDAP_EMAIL_ATTR: mail 6
LDAP_UID_ATTR: uid 7
LDAP_URI: ldap://<example_url>.com 8
LDAP_USER_FILTER: (memberof=cn=developers,ou=Users,dc=<domain_name>,dc=com) 9
LDAP_USER_RDN: 10
    - ou=<example_organization_unit>
    - o=<organization_id>
    - dc=<example_domain_component>
    - dc=com
# ...
    1
    Required. Must be set to LDAP.
    2
    Required. The admin DN for LDAP authentication.
    3
    Required. The admin password for LDAP authentication.
    4
    Required. Whether to allow SSL/TLS insecure fallback for LDAP authentication.
    5
    Required. The base DN for LDAP authentication.
    6
    Required. The email attribute for LDAP authentication.
    7
    Required. The UID attribute for LDAP authentication.
    8
    Required. The LDAP URI.
    9
    Required. The user filter for LDAP authentication.
    10
    Required. The user RDN for LDAP authentication.
  2. After you have added all required LDAP fields, save the changes and restart your Red Hat Quay deployment.

10.3. Enabling the LDAP_RESTRICTED_USER_FILTER configuration field

The LDAP_RESTRICTED_USER_FILTER configuration field is a subset of the LDAP_USER_FILTER configuration field. When configured, this option allows Red Hat Quay administrators the ability to configure LDAP users as restricted users when Red Hat Quay uses LDAP as its authentication provider.

Use the following procedure to enable LDAP restricted users on your Red Hat Quay deployment.

Prerequisites

  • Your Red Hat Quay deployment uses LDAP as its authentication provider.
  • You have configured the LDAP_USER_FILTER field in your config.yaml file.

Procedure

  1. In your deployment’s config.yaml file, add the LDAP_RESTRICTED_USER_FILTER parameter and specify the group of restricted users, for example, members: 

    # ...
AUTHENTICATION_TYPE: LDAP
# ...
LDAP_ADMIN_DN: uid=<name>,ou=Users,o=<organization_id>,dc=<example_domain_component>,dc=com
LDAP_ADMIN_PASSWD: ABC123
LDAP_ALLOW_INSECURE_FALLBACK: false
LDAP_BASE_DN:
    - o=<organization_id>
    - dc=<example_domain_component>
    - dc=com
LDAP_EMAIL_ATTR: mail
LDAP_UID_ATTR: uid
LDAP_URI: ldap://<example_url>.com
LDAP_USER_FILTER: (memberof=cn=developers,ou=Users,o=<example_organization_unit>,dc=<example_domain_component>,dc=com)
LDAP_RESTRICTED_USER_FILTER: (<filterField>=<value>) 1
LDAP_USER_RDN:
    - ou=<example_organization_unit>
    - o=<organization_id>
    - dc=<example_domain_component>
    - dc=com
# ...
    1
    Configures specified users as restricted users.
  2. Start, or restart, your Red Hat Quay deployment.

After enabling the LDAP_RESTRICTED_USER_FILTER feature, your LDAP Red Hat Quay users are restricted from reading and writing content, and creating organizations.

10.4. Enabling the LDAP_SUPERUSER_FILTER configuration field

With the LDAP_SUPERUSER_FILTER field configured, Red Hat Quay administrators can configure Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) users as superusers if Red Hat Quay uses LDAP as its authentication provider.

Use the following procedure to enable LDAP superusers on your Red Hat Quay deployment.

Prerequisites

  • Your Red Hat Quay deployment uses LDAP as its authentication provider.
  • You have configured the LDAP_USER_FILTER field field in your config.yaml file.

Procedure

  1. In your deployment’s config.yaml file, add the LDAP_SUPERUSER_FILTER parameter and add the group of users you want configured as super users, for example, root: 

    # ...
AUTHENTICATION_TYPE: LDAP
# ...
LDAP_ADMIN_DN: uid=<name>,ou=Users,o=<organization_id>,dc=<example_domain_component>,dc=com
LDAP_ADMIN_PASSWD: ABC123
LDAP_ALLOW_INSECURE_FALLBACK: false
LDAP_BASE_DN:
    - o=<organization_id>
    - dc=<example_domain_component>
    - dc=com
LDAP_EMAIL_ATTR: mail
LDAP_UID_ATTR: uid
LDAP_URI: ldap://<example_url>.com
LDAP_USER_FILTER: (memberof=cn=developers,ou=Users,o=<example_organization_unit>,dc=<example_domain_component>,dc=com)
LDAP_SUPERUSER_FILTER: (<filterField>=<value>) 1
LDAP_USER_RDN:
    - ou=<example_organization_unit>
    - o=<organization_id>
    - dc=<example_domain_component>
    - dc=com
# ...
    1
    Configures specified users as superusers.
  2. Start, or restart, your Red Hat Quay deployment.

After enabling the LDAP_SUPERUSER_FILTER feature, your LDAP Red Hat Quay users have superuser privileges. The following options are available to superusers:

  • Manage users
  • Manage organizations
  • Manage service keys
  • View the change log
  • Query the usage logs
  • Create globally visible user messages

10.5. Common LDAP configuration issues

The following errors might be returned with an invalid configuration.

  • Invalid credentials. If you receive this error, the Administrator DN or Administrator DN password values are incorrect. Ensure that you are providing accurate Administrator DN and password values.

  • *Verification of superuser %USERNAME% failed. This error is returned for the following reasons:

    • The username has not been found.
    • The user does not exist in the remote authentication system.
    • LDAP authorization is configured improperly.

  • Cannot find the current logged in user. When configuring LDAP for Red Hat Quay, there may be situations where the LDAP connection is established successfully using the username and password provided in the Administrator DN fields. However, if the current logged-in user cannot be found within the specified User Relative DN path using the UID Attribute or Mail Attribute fields, there are typically two potential reasons for this:

    • The current logged in user does not exist in the User Relative DN path.

    • The Administrator DN does not have rights to search or read the specified LDAP path.

      To fix this issue, ensure that the logged in user is included in the User Relative DN path, or provide the correct permissions to the Administrator DN account.