Authentication tokens

A user’s access to PE services can be controlled using authentication tokens. Users can generate their own authentication tokens using the token endpoint.

POST /auth/token

Generate an access token for the user whose login information is POSTed. This token can then be used to authenticate requests to PE services using either the X-Authentication header or the token query parameter. For more information about generating and using authentication tokens to access PE services, see the token-based authentication documentation.

Note: This route is intended to require zero authentication. While HTTPS is still required (unless PE is explicitly configured to permit HTTP), neither a whitelisted cert nor a session cookie is needed to POST to this endpoint.

Request format

login: The user’s login for the PE console (required).

password: The user’s password for the PE console (required).

lifetime: If you have the permission to change a token’s lifetime value, you can specify the expiration time for the token you are presently generating. This key is optional.

When setting a token’s lifetime, specify a numeric value followed by “y” (years), “d” (days), “h” (hours), “m” (minutes), or “s”(seconds). For example, a value of “12h” is 12 hours. Do not add a space between the numeric value and the unit of measurement. If you do not specify a unit, it is assumed to be seconds. If you do not want the token to expire, set the lifetime to “0”. Setting it to zero gives the token a lifetime of approximately 10 years.

Note: The default lifetime for all tokens is also configurable. For information on changing the default lifetime, see Changing the default lifetime.

label: Assigns a user-defined label to the token you are presently generating. This key is optional.

This key will set a label for the token that can be used with other RBAC token endpoints. Labels:

• Must be no longer than 200 characters.
• Must not contain commas.
• Must contain something other than whitespace. (Whitespace will be trimmed from the beginning and end of the label, though it is allowed elsewhere.)
• Must not be the same as a label for another token for the same user.

Token labels are assigned on a per-user basis: two users can each have a token labelled “my token”, but a single user cannot have two tokens both labelled “my token”. You cannot use labels to refer to other users’ tokens.

Example requests

{"login": "<LOGIN>@example.com",
 "password": "<PASSWORD>",
 "lifetime": "4m",
 "label": "personal workstation token"}

curl –cacert $(puppet config print cacert) -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"login": "<LOGIN>", "password": "<PASSWORD>", "lifetime": "4h", "label": "four-hour token"}' https://<HOSTNAME>:4433/rbac-api/v1/auth/token

The parts of this curl command request are explained below:

• –cacert [FILE]: Specifies a CA certificate as described in Forming requests for the node classifier. Alternatively, you could use the -k flag to turn off SSL verification of the RBAC server so that you can use the HTTPS protocol without providing a CA cert. If you do not provide one of these options in your cURL request, cURL complains about not being able to verify the RBAC server.

  Note: The -k flag is shown as an example only. You should use your own discretion when choosing the appropriate server verification method for the tool that you are using.

• -X POST: This is an HTTP POST request to provide your login information to the RBAC service.
• -H 'Content-Type: application/json': sets the Content-Type header to application/json, which indicates to RBAC that the data being sent is in JSON format..
• -d '{"login": "<YOUR PE USER NAME>", "password": "<YOUR PE PASSWORD>", "lifetime": "4m", "label": "four-minute token"}': Provide the user name and password that you use to log in to the PE console. Optionally, set the token’s lifetime and label.
• https://<HOSTNAME>:<PORT>/rbac-api/v1/auth/token: Sends the request to the token endpoint. For HOSTNAME, provide the FQDN of the server that is hosting the PE console service. If you are making the call from the console server, you can use “localhost.” For PORT, provide the port that the PE services (node classifier service, RBAC service, and activity service) listen on. The default port is 4433.

Return format

• 200 OK if the credentials are good and the user is not revoked.
• 401 Unauthenticated if the credentials are bad or the user is revoked.
• 400 Malformed if something is wrong with the request body.

Example return

{"token": "asd0u0=2jdijasodj-w0duwdhjashd,kjsahdasoi0d9hw0hduashd0a9wdy0whdkaudhaksdhc9chakdh92..."}