nginxauthdaemon

Authentication daemon for nginx-proxied or nginx-served applications.

Installation and Configuration

1. Create virtual environment for the daemon virtualenv env
2. Activate it using . ./env/bin/activate
3. Install nginxauthdaemon from pypi pip install nginxauthdaemon
4. Create config file overriding default values, see [Daemon configuration]. NB! You need to override default SESSION_SALT and DES_KEY for security.
5. Setup env variable DAEMON_SETTINGS pointing to your config file.
6. Run daemon with your favorite WSGI server, for ex gunicorn nginxauthdaemon:app.
7. Update nginx.conf. See [NGINX Configuration].
8. Reload nginx (nginx -t reload).
9. Test your setup.

Docker

• Build: docker build -t nginxauthdaemon .
• Launch: docker run -p 5000:5000 -v $(pwd)/example.cfg:/example.cfg -e DAEMON_SETTINGS=/example.cfg -e WEB_CONCURRENCY=4 nginxauthdaemon
• Compose file located in docker-compose.yml.sample

Daemon configuration

Basic configuration properties are:

Option	Description
REALM_NAME	Realm name shown on login page
SESSION_COOKIE	Session cookie name. Typically you do not need to change this.
TARGET_HEADER	Header used to pass protected URL from NGINX
SESSION_SALT	Long string used a salt for creation of session key.
DES_KEY	8byte DES encryption key
AUTHENTICATOR	Authenticator class name, by default 'auth.DummyAuthenticator'

Authenticators available out-of-the-box:

Authenticator name	Description
nginxauthdaemon.auth.DummyAuthenticator	Simplest authenticator checking username equals password
nginxauthdaemon.crowdauth.CrowdAuthenticator	Atlassian Crowd based authenticator

Crowd authenticator has additional options:

Option	Description
CROWD_URL	Crowd server URL, for ex http://localhost:8095/crowd/
CROWD_APP_NAME	Crowd application name
CROWD_APP_PASSWORD	Crowd application password

Access token options +----------------+----------------------------------------------------------------+ | JWT_PRIVATE_KEY | RS256 secret key for access token signing. | +----------------+----------------------------------------------------------------+ | ACCESS_TOKEN_COOKIE | Access token cookie name. | +----------------+----------------------------------------------------------------+

NGINX Configuration

Your NGINX should be compiled with ngx_http_auth_request_module. Please check it using nginx -V command.

Example configuration:

upstream auth-backend {
    server 127.0.0.1:5000;
}

location = /auth/validate {
    internal;
    proxy_pass http://auth-backend;

    proxy_pass_request_body off;
    proxy_set_header Content-Length "";
}

location = /auth/login {
    proxy_pass http://auth-backend;
    proxy_set_header X-Target $request_uri;
}

# Protected application
location / {
    auth_request /auth/validate;

    # redirect 401 and 403 to login form
    error_page 401 403 =200 /auth/login;
}

HAProxy Configuration

Install haproxy-auth-request script from https://github.com/TimWolla/haproxy-auth-request/

Sample HAProxy config (thanks to Dmitry Kamenskikh):

global
        log /dev/log        local0
        log /dev/log        local1 notice
        chroot /var/lib/haproxy
        stats socket /run/haproxy/admin.sock mode 660 level admin expose-fd listeners
        stats timeout 30s
        user haproxy
        group haproxy
        daemon

        lua-load /usr/share/haproxy/auth-request.lua

defaults
        log        global
        mode        http
        option        httplog
        option        dontlognull
        timeout connect 5000
        timeout client  50000
        timeout server  50000

frontend main
        mode http
        bind :80

        acl management path_beg /management
        acl login_page path -i /auth/login
        http-request lua.auth-request auth_request /auth/validate if management
        acl login_success var(txn.auth_response_successful) -m bool
        http-request add-header X-target %[path] if management
        http-request set-path /auth/login if management ! login_success
        use_backend auth_request if login_page

        default_backend just200

backend just200
        server main 172.17.0.1:3000 check

backend auth_request
        mode http
        server main 172.17.0.1:5000 check

Limitations

Daemon can be extended to support LDAP or any other auth method, but it support only Atlassian Crowd for now. I'll be happy to merge PRs with new auth methods.

License

The reference implementation is subject to MIT License.