Role Binding

Learn how to grant and modify permissions on given resources for an IDP or robot user.

May 26, 2023

This chapter will detail how to:

Grant/modify permissions (Roles) on given Resources to a User (Idp or Robot User).
Remove all permissions on a Resource from a User (Idp or Robot User).

ℹ️

Default Privileges.

Root User: The activation of the Authentication and Authorization feature generates a Root User with unalterable and unrevokable clusterAdmin privileges.
Robot User: Robot users do not have any permission by default. They will need to be set by a clusterAdmin.
The case of the Pipeline User: In Pachyderm, you do not explicitly grant users access to pipelines, they get set for you when you create or update a pipeline.

⚠️

Rules to keep in mind

A user or group can have one or more roles on a specific Resource.
Roles are inherited: if a user has a role on a cluster, they have that role for all projects and repos in that cluster.
The creator of a repo becomes its repoOwner.
To update a pipeline, you must have at least repoReader-level access to all pipeline inputs and repoWriter-level access to the pipeline output. This is because pipelines read from their input repos and write to their output repos.
When a user subscribes a pipeline to a repo, Pachyderm sets that user as an repoOwner of that pipeline’s output repo. If additional users need access to the output repository, the initial repoOwner of a pipeline’s output repo, or a clusterAdmin, needs to grant that user access to the repo.

Set Roles to Users #

A clusterAdmin can grant admin privileges on a cluster or any lower level resources to other users.
A repoOwner of a given repository (or a clusterAdmin as mentioned above) can set any level of access to “their” repo to users by running the command:
```
pachctl auth set <resource> <resource name> [role1,role2 | none ] <prefix:subject>
```

ℹ️

Alternatively, you have the option to set your cluster roles directly through Helm using the helm value: pachd.pachAuthClusterRoleBindings.

For example, grant reader access to all repos to a specific group:

 pachd:
    pachAuthClusterRoleBindings:
        group:data-scientists:
        - repoReader

Or, give the user paul@company.com the clusterAdmin role, and the robot user wallie logReader rights on the cluster.

 pachd:
    pachAuthClusterRoleBindings:
        user:paul@company.com:
        - clusterAdmin
        robot:wallie:
        - logReader

To keep using our Auth0 example and illustrate the attribution of a given Role to a User, let’s have our Root User (with default clusterAdmin privileges) give repoReader access to a repo to our one-pachyderm-user@gmail.com user.

In particular, we will:

Connect as our Root User again.
Create a repo named testinput containing one text file.
Grant repoReader access on this repo to our user one-pachyderm-user@gmail.com registered with our IdP (Auth0).
See what happens when one-pachyderm-user@gmail.com tries to write in the repo without the proper writing access.

First, let’s connect as our Root User:
```
pachctl auth use-auth-token
```
You will be asked to re-enter your Root token.

Second, create a Repo as follow:

mkdir -p ./testinput 
printf "this is a test" >./testinput/test.txt
pachctl create repo testinput
cd testinput && pachctl put file testinput@master -f test.txt

A quick pachctl list repo will list your new repo and display your access level on that repo as a clusterAdmin.

Admin Repo Access Level

Third, grant repoReader access to our user one-pachyderm-user@gmail.com:
```
pachctl auth set repo testinput repoReader user:one-pachyderm-user@gmail.com
```
… and take a quick look at his access level:
```
pachctl auth get repo testinput
```
The command returns the list of users granted access to this repo and their associated access level.
```
user:one-pachyderm-user@gmail.com: [repoReader]
pach:root: [repoOwner]
```

ℹ️

Note that the user one-pachyderm-user@gmail.com has a prefix user. Pachyderm defines 4 prefixes depending on the type of user:

robot
user
group
pipeline (as mentioned above, this prefix will not be used in the context of granting privileges to users. However, it does exist. We are listing it here to give an exhauxtive list of all prefixes.)

Aditionnally, the “everyone” user allClusterUsers has no specific prefix. See the example below to learn how to assign repoReader access to allClusterUsers on a repo.

Finally, have one-pachyderm-user@gmail.com try to add a file to testinput without proper writing privileges:

# Login as `one-pachyderm-user@gmail.com`
pachctl auth login
# Try to write into testinput repo
printf "this is another test" >./testinput/anothertest.txt
cd testinput && pachctl put file testinput@master -f anothertest.txt

The command returns an error message:

user:one-pachyderm-user@pachyderm.io is not authorized to perform this operation - needs permissions [REPO_WRITE] on REPO testinput

📖

Use --help to display the list of all available commands, arguments, and flags of the command pachctl auth set.

ℹ️

To alter a user’s privileges, simply re-run the pachctl auth set command above with a different set of Roles. For example,

pachctl auth set repo testinput repoWriter user:one-pachyderm-user@gmail.com

will give one-pachyderm-user@gmail.com repoWriter privileges when they were inially granted repoReader access.

You can remove all access level on a repo to a user by using the none keyword. For example,

pachctl auth set repo testinput none user:one-pachyderm-user@gmail.com

will remove any previous granted rights on the repo testinput to the user one-pachyderm-user@gmail.com.

To assign repoReader access to allClusterUsers on a repo:

pachctl auth set repo testinput repoReader allClusterUsers

Set Roles to Groups #

If your IdP enables group support, you can grant access on Pachyderm resources to a group of users.

Let’s keep using our Auth0 example as an illustration, and:

As a clusterAdmin, create a Group in Auth0.
Assign our user to the newly created group.
Update our connector accordingly.
Grant the group an owner access to a specific repo in Pachyderm.

📖

To enable the Group creation in Auth0, you will need to install an Authorization Extension to Auth0:

Go to Auth0 Dashboard > Extensions.
Select Auth0 Authorization and answer the prompt to install.
Choose where you would like to store your data: Webtask Storage for this example and click Install
Additionally, because Auth0 does not include the groups in the ID token when you use the Authorization Extension above, you will have to manually edit the following rule:
- In the Auth Pipeline menu on the left, in Rules, click on auth0-authorization-extension. This will take you to the Edit Rule page of the extension.
- Copy the following context.idToken['http://pachyderm.com/groups'] = user.groups; line 35 and Save your changes.

Group creation
An Authorization link should now show on your Auth0 webpage. In Authorization/Groups, create a group. Here testgroup:
Add your user to your group
In Authorization/Users, select your user one-pachyderm-user@gmail.com and add them to your testgroup as follow.
In User Mangement/Users, you user should now show the following addition to their app_metadata:
```
{
    "authorization": {
        "groups": [
        "testgroup"
        ]
    }
}
```

Update your connector

=== “oidc-dex-connector.json”

```json
{
    "type": "oidc",
    "id": "auth0",
    "name": "Auth0",
    "version": 1,
    "config":{
    "issuer": "https://dev-k34x5yjn.us.auth0.com/",
    "clientID": "hegmOc5rTotLPu5ByRDXOvBAzgs3wuw5",
    "clientSecret": "7xk8O71Uhp5T-bJp_aP2Squwlh4zZTJs65URPma-2UT7n1iigDaMUD9ArhUR-2aL",
    "redirectURI": "http://<ip>:30658/callback",
    "scopes": ["groups", "email", "profile"],
    "claimMapping":{
        "groups": "http://pachyderm.com/groups"
    },
    "insecureEnableGroups": true
    }
}
```

=== “oidc-dex-connector.yaml”

``` yaml
type: oidc
id: auth0
name: Auth0
version: 1
config:
    issuer: https://dev-k34x5yjn.us.auth0.com/
    clientID: hegmOc5rTotLPu5ByRDXOvBAzgs3wuw5
    clientSecret: 7xk8O71Uhp5T-bJp_aP2Squwlh4zZTJs65URPma-2UT7n1iigDaMUD9ArhUR-2aL
    redirectURI: http://<ip>:30658/callback
    scopes: 
    - groups
    - email
    - profile
    claimMapping:
        groups: http://pachyderm.com/groups
    insecureEnableGroups: true
```

Note the addition of the scopes and claimMapping fields to your original connector configuration file. Update your connector:

pachctl idp update-connector auth0 --version 2

Your group is all set to receive permissions to Pachyderm’s resources.

Grant the group an admin access to a specific repo in Pachyderm.

pachctl auth set repo testinput repoOwner group:testgroup

A quick check at this repo should give you its updated list of users an their access level:

pachctl auth get repo testinput

System Response

pach:root: [repoOwner]
user:another-pachyderm-user@gmail.com: [repoReader]
group:testgroup: [repoOwner]

📖

The following command `pachctl auth get-groups` lists the groups that have been defined on your cluster.

👈 Permissions by Role