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Authentication

Overview

We use JWT tokens in communication between almost all components (compute, pageserver, safekeeper, CLI) regardless of the protocol used (HTTP/PostgreSQL). storage_broker currently has no authentication. Authentication is optional and is disabled by default for easier debugging. It is used in some tests, though. Note that we do not cover authentication with pg.neon.tech here.

For HTTP connections we use the Bearer authentication scheme. For PostgreSQL connections we expect the token to be passed as a password. There is a caveat for psql: it silently truncates passwords to 100 symbols, so to correctly pass JWT via psql you have to either use PGPASSWORD environment variable, or store password in psql's config file.

Current token scopes are described in utils::auth::Scope. There are no expiration or rotation schemes.

TODO: some scopes allow both access to server management API and to the data. These probably should be split into multiple scopes.

Tokens should not occur in logs. They may sometimes occur in configuration files, although this is discouraged because configs may be parsed and dumped into logs.

Tokens generation and validation

JWT tokens are signed using a private key. Compute/pageserver/safekeeper use the private key's public counterpart to validate JWT tokens. These components should not have access to the private key and may only get tokens from their configuration or external clients.

The key pair is generated once for an installation of compute/pageserver/safekeeper, e.g. by neon_local init. There is currently no way to rotate the key without bringing down all components.

Best practices

See RFC 8725: JSON Web Token Best Current Practices

Token format

The JWT tokens in Neon use "EdDSA" as the algorithm (defined in RFC8037).

Example:

Header:

{
  "alg": "EdDSA",
  "typ": "JWT"
}

Payload:

{
  "scope": "tenant",  # "tenant", "pageserverapi", or "safekeeperdata"
  "tenant_id": "5204921ff44f09de8094a1390a6a50f6",
}

Meanings of scope:

"tenant": Provides access to all data for a specific tenant

"pageserverapi": Provides blanket access to all tenants on the pageserver plus pageserver-wide APIs. Should only be used e.g. for status check/tenant creation/list.

"safekeeperdata": Provides blanket access to all data on the safekeeper plus safekeeper-wide APIs. Should only be used e.g. for status check. Currently also used for connection from any pageserver to any safekeeper.

CLI

CLI generates a key pair during call to neon_local init with the following commands:

openssl genpkey -algorithm ed25519 -out auth_private_key.pem
openssl pkey -in auth_private_key.pem -pubout -out auth_public_key.pem

Configuration files for all components point to public_key.pem for JWT validation. However, authentication is disabled by default. There is no way to automatically enable it everywhere, you have to configure each component individually.

CLI also generates signed token (full access to Pageserver) and saves it in the CLI's config file under pageserver.auth_token. Note that pageserver's config does not have any similar parameter. CLI is the only component which accesses that token. Technically it could generate it from the private key on each run, but it does not do that for some reason (TODO).

Compute

Overview

Compute is a per-timeline PostgreSQL instance, so it should not have any access to data of other tenants. All tokens used by a compute are restricted to a specific tenant. There is no auth isolation from other timelines of the same tenant, but a non-rogue client never accesses another timeline even by an accident: timeline IDs are random and hard to guess.

Incoming connections

All incoming connections are from PostgreSQL clients. Their authentication is just plain PostgreSQL authentication and out of scope for this document.

There is no administrative API except those provided by PostgreSQL.

Outgoing connections

Compute connects to Pageserver for getting pages. The connection string is configured by the neon.pageserver_connstring PostgreSQL GUC, e.g. postgresql://no_user@localhost:15028. If the $NEON_AUTH_TOKEN environment variable is set, it is used as the password for the connection. (The pageserver uses JWT tokens for authentication, so the password is really a token.)

Compute connects to Safekeepers to write and commit data. The list of safekeeper addresses is given in the neon.safekeepers GUC. The connections to the safekeepers take the password from the $NEON_AUTH_TOKEN environment variable, if set.

The compute_ctl binary that runs before the PostgreSQL server, and launches PostgreSQL, also makes a connection to the pageserver. It uses it to fetch the initial "base backup" dump, to initialize the PostgreSQL data directory. It also uses $NEON_AUTH_TOKEN as the password for the connection.

Pageserver

Overview

Pageserver keeps track of multiple tenants, each having multiple timelines. For each timeline, it connects to the corresponding Safekeeper. Information about "corresponding Safekeeper" is published by Safekeepers in the storage_broker, but they do not publish access tokens, otherwise what is the point of authentication.

Pageserver keeps a connection to some set of Safekeepers, which may or may not correspond to active Computes. Hence, we cannot obtain a per-timeline access token from a Compute. E.g. if the timeline's Compute terminates before all WAL is consumed by the Pageserver, the Pageserver continues consuming WAL.

Pageserver replicas' authentication is the same as the main's.

Incoming connections

Pageserver listens for connections from computes. Each compute should present a token valid for the timeline's tenant.

Pageserver also has HTTP API: some parts are per-tenant, some parts are server-wide, these are different scopes.

Authentication can be enabled separately for the HTTP mgmt API, and for the libpq connections from compute. The http_auth_type and pg_auth_type configuration variables in Pageserver's config may have one of these values:

  • Trust removes all authentication.
  • NeonJWT enables JWT validation. Tokens are validated using the public key which lies in a PEM file specified in the auth_validation_public_key_path config.

Outgoing connections

Pageserver makes a connection to a Safekeeper for each active timeline. As Pageserver may want to access any timeline it has on the disk, it is given a blanket JWT token to access any data on any Safekeeper. This token is passed through an environment variable called NEON_AUTH_TOKEN (non-configurable as of writing this text).

A better way may be to store JWT token for each timeline next to it, but may be not.

Safekeeper

Overview

Safekeeper keeps track of multiple tenants, each having multiple timelines.

Incoming connections

Safekeeper accepts connections from Compute/Pageserver, each connection corresponds to a specific timeline and requires a corresponding JWT token.

Safekeeper also has HTTP API: some parts are per-tenant, some parts are server-wide, these are different scopes.

The auth-validation-public-key-path command line options controls the authentication mode:

  • If the option is missing, there is no authentication or JWT token validation.
  • If the option is present, it should be a path to the public key PEM file used for JWT token validation.

Outgoing connections

No connections are initiated by a Safekeeper.

In the source code

Tests do not use authentication by default. If you need it, you can enable it by configuring the test's environment:

neon_env_builder.auth_enabled = True

You will have to generate tokens if you want to access components inside the test directly, use AuthKeys.generate_*_token methods for that. If you create a new scope, please create a new method to prevent mistypes in scope's name.