title: “Authentication with Password File”
date: 2020-04-04T12:30:30
slug: authentication-with-password-file

/tmp/users/user-details.csv

# User File Contents
password123,user1,u0001
password123,user2,u0002
password123,user3,u0003
password123,user4,u0004
password123,user5,u0005

/etc/kubernetes/manifests/kube-apiserver.yaml

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
 name: kube-apiserver
 namespace: kube-system
spec:
 containers:
 - command:
 - kube-apiserver
 - --basic-auth-file=/tmp/users/user-details.csv
 image: k8s.gcr.io/kube-apiserver-amd64:v1.11.3
 name: kube-apiserver
 volumeMounts:
 - mountPath: /tmp/users
 name: usr-details
 readOnly: true
 volumes:
 - hostPath:
 path: /tmp/users
 type: DirectoryOrCreate
 name: usr-details

Create the necessary roles and role bindings for these users:

---
kind: Role
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
metadata:
 namespace: default
 name: pod-reader
rules:
- apiGroups: [""] # "" indicates the core API group
 resources: ["pods"]
 verbs: ["get", "watch", "list"]

---
# This role binding allows "jane" to read pods in the "default" namespace.
kind: RoleBinding
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
metadata:
 name: read-pods
 namespace: default
subjects:
- kind: User
 name: user1 # Name is case sensitive
 apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
roleRef:
 kind: Role #this must be Role or ClusterRole
 name: pod-reader # this must match the name of the Role or ClusterRole you wish to bind to
 apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io

Once created, you may authenticate into the kube-api server using the users credentials

curl -v -k https://localhost:6443/api/v1/pods -u "user1:password123"