Authentication Options

LibreNMS supports multiple authentication modules along with Two Factor Auth. Here we will provide configuration details for these modules. Alternatively, you can use Socialite Providers which supports a wide variety of social/OAuth/SAML authentication methods.

Available authentication modules

MySQL: mysql
Active Directory: active_directory
LDAP: ldap
Radius: radius
HTTP Auth: http-auth, ad_authorization, ldap_authorization
Single Sign-on: sso

⚠️ When enabling a new authentication module, the local users will no longer be available to log in.

Enable authentication module

To enable a particular authentication module you need to set this up in config.php. Please note that only ONE module can be enabled. LibreNMS doesn't support multiple authentication mechanisms at the same time.

auth/general

lnms config:set auth_mechanism mysql

User levels and User account type

1: Normal User: You will need to assign device / port permissions for users at this level.
5: Global Read: Read only Administrator.
10: Administrator: This is a global read/write admin account.
11: Demo Account: Provides full read/write with certain restrictions (i.e can't delete devices).

Note Oxidized configs can often contain sensitive data. Because of that only Administrator account type can see configs.

Note for SELinux users

When using SELinux on the LibreNMS server, you need to allow Apache (httpd) to connect LDAP/Active Directory server, this is disabled by default. You can use SELinux Booleans to allow network access to LDAP resources with this command:

setsebool -P httpd_can_connect_ldap=1

Testing authentication

You can test authentication with this script:

./scripts/auth_test.php

Enable debug output to troubleshoot issues

MySQL Authentication

auth/general

lnms config:set auth_mechanism mysql

This is default option with LibreNMS so you should have already have the following configuration setup in your environment file (.env).

DB_HOST=HOSTNAME
DB_DATABASE=DBNAME
DB_USERNAME=DBUSER
DB_PASSWORD="DBPASS"

Active Directory Authentication

auth/general

lnms config:set auth_mechanism active_directory

Install php-ldap or php8.1-ldap, making sure to install the same version as PHP.

If you have issues with secure LDAP try setting

auth/ad

lnms config:set auth_ad_check_certificates 0

this will ignore certificate errors.

Require actual membership of the configured groups

auth/ad

lnms config:set auth_ad_require_groupmembership 1

If you set auth_ad_require_groupmembership to 1, the authenticated user has to be a member of the specific group. Otherwise all users can authenticate, and will be either level 0 or you may set auth_ad_global_read to 1 and all users will have read only access unless otherwise specified.

Old account cleanup

Cleanup of old accounts is done by checking the authlog. You will need to set the number of days when old accounts will be purged AUTOMATICALLY by daily.sh.

Please ensure that you set the authlog_purge value to be greater than active_directory.users_purge otherwise old users won't be removed.

Sample configuration

auth/general

lnms config:set auth_mechanism active_directory
lnms config:set auth_ad_url ldaps://server.example.com
lnms config:set auth_ad_domain
lnms config:set auth_ad_base_dn dc=example,dc=com
lnms config:set auth_ad_check_certificates true
lnms config:set auth_ad_binduser examplebinduser
lnms config:set auth_ad_bindpassword examplepassword
lnms config:set auth_ad_timeout 5
lnms config:set auth_ad_debug false
lnms config:set active_directory.users_purge 30
lnms config:set auth_ad_require_groupmembership true
lnms config:set auth_ad_groups.ad-admingroup.level 10
lnms config:set auth_ad_groups.ad-usergroup.level 5

Replace ad-admingroup with your Active Directory admin-user group and ad-usergroup with your standard user group. It is highly suggested to create a bind user, otherwise "remember me", alerting users, and the API will not work.

Active Directory redundancy

You can set two Active Directory servers by editing the auth_ad_url setting like this example:

auth/ad

lnms config:set auth_ad_url "ldaps://dc1.example.com ldaps://dc2.example.com"

Active Directory LDAP filters

You can add an LDAP filter to be ANDed with the builtin user filter ((sAMAccountName=$username)).

The defaults are:

auth/ad

lnms config:set auth_ad_user_filter "(objectclass=user)"
lnms config:set auth_ad_group_filter "(objectclass=group)"

This yields (&(objectclass=user)(sAMAccountName=$username)) for the user filter and (&(objectclass=group)(sAMAccountName=$group)) for the group filter.

SELinux configuration

On RHEL / CentOS / Fedora, in order for LibreNMS to reach Active Directory, you need to allow LDAP requests in SELinux:

setsebool -P httpd_can_connect_ldap 1

LDAP Authentication

auth/general

lnms config:set auth_mechanism ldap

Install php_ldap or php7.0-ldap, making sure to install the same version as PHP.

For the below, keep in mind the auth DN is composed using a string join of auth_ldap_prefix, the username, and auth_ldap_suffix. This means it needs to include = in the prefix and , in the suffix. So lets say we have a prefix of uid=, the user derp, and the suffix of ,ou=users,dc=foo,dc=bar, then the result is uid=derp,ou=users,dc=foo,dc=bar.

Standard config

auth/ldap

lnms config:set auth_ldap_server ldap.example.com
lnms config:set auth_ldap_suffix ',ou=People,dc=example,dc=com'
lnms config:set auth_ldap_groupbase 'ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com'
lnms config:set auth_ldap_groups.admin.level 10
lnms config:set auth_ldap_groups.pfy.level 5
lnms config:set auth_ldap_groups.support.level 1

Additional options (usually not needed)

auth/ldap

lnms config:set auth_ldap_version 3
lnms config:set auth_ldap_port 389
lnms config:set auth_ldap_starttls true
lnms config:set auth_ldap_prefix 'uid='
lnms config:set auth_ldap_group 'cn=groupname,ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com'
lnms config:set auth_ldap_groupmemberattr memberUid
lnms config:set auth_ldap_groupmembertype username
lnms config:set auth_ldap_uid_attribute uidnumber
lnms config:set auth_ldap_timeout 5
lnms config:set auth_ldap_emailattr mail
lnms config:set auth_ldap_attr.uid uid
lnms config:set auth_ldap_debug false
lnms config:set auth_ldap_userdn true
lnms config:set auth_ldap_userlist_filter service=informatique
lnms config:set auth_ldap_wildcard_ou false
lnms config:set auth_ldap_cacertfile /opt/librenms/ldap-ca-cert
lnms config:set auth_ldap_ignorecert false

LDAP bind user (optional)

If your ldap server does not allow anonymous bind, it is highly suggested to create a bind user, otherwise "remember me", alerting users, and the API will not work.

auth/ldap

lnms config:set auth_ldap_binduser ldapbind
lnms config:set auth_ldap_binddn 'CN=John.Smith,CN=Users,DC=MyDomain,DC=com'
lnms config:set auth_ldap_bindpassword password

LDAP server redundancy

You can set two LDAP servers by editing the auth_ldap_server like this example:

auth/ldap

lnms config:set auth_ldap_server ldaps://dir1.example.com ldaps://dir2.example.com

An example config setup for use with Jumpcloud LDAP as a service is:

auth/ldap

lnms config:set auth_mechanism ldap
lnms config:set auth_ldap_version 3
lnms config:set auth_ldap_server ldap.jumpcloud.com
lnms config:set auth_ldap_port 389
lnms config:set auth_ldap_prefix 'uid=';
lnms config:set auth_ldap_suffix ',ou=Users,o={id},dc=jumpcloud,dc=com'
lnms config:set auth_ldap_groupbase 'ou=Users,o={id},dc=jumpcloud,dc=com'
lnms config:set auth_ldap_groupmemberattr member
lnms config:set auth_ldap_groups.{group}.level 10
lnms config:set auth_ldap_userdn true

Replace {id} with the unique ID provided by Jumpcloud. Replace {group} with the unique group name created in Jumpcloud. This field is case sensitive.

Note: If you have multiple user groups to define individual access levels replace the auth_ldap_groups line with the following:

auth/ldap

lnms config:set auth_ldap_groups.{admin_group}.level 10]
lnms config:set auth_ldap_groups.global_readonly_group.level 5

SELinux configuration

On RHEL / CentOS / Fedora, in order for LibreNMS to reach LDAP, you need to allow LDAP requests in SELinux:

setsebool -P httpd_can_connect_ldap 1

Radius Authentication

Please note that a mysql user is created for each user the logs in successfully. Users are assigned the user role by default, unless radius sends a reply attribute with a role.

You can change the default role(s) by setting

auth/radius

lnms config:set radius.default_roles '["csr"]'

The attribute Filter-ID is a standard Radius-Reply-Attribute (string) that can be assigned a specially formatted string to assign a single role to the user.

The string to send in Filter-ID reply attribute must start with librenms_role_ followed by the role name. For example to set the admin role send librenms_role_admin.

The following strings correspond to the built-in roles, but any defined role can be used: - librenms_role_normal - Sets the normal user level. - librenms_role_admin - Sets the administrator level. - librenms_role_global-read - Sets the global read level

LibreNMS will ignore any other strings sent in Filter-ID and revert to default role that is set in your config.

$config['radius']['hostname']      = 'localhost';
$config['radius']['port']          = '1812';
$config['radius']['secret']        = 'testing123';
$config['radius']['timeout']       = 3;
$config['radius']['users_purge']   = 14;  // Purge users who haven't logged in for 14 days.
$config['radius']['default_level'] = 1;  // Set the default user level when automatically creating a user.

Radius Huntgroup

Freeradius has a function called Radius Huntgroup which allows to send different attributes based on NAS. This may be utilized if you already use Filter-ID in your environment and also want to use radius with LibreNMS.

Old account cleanup

Cleanup of old accounts is done by checking the authlog. You will need to set the number of days when old accounts will be purged AUTOMATICALLY by daily.sh.

Please ensure that you set the $config['authlog_purge'] value to be greater than $config['radius']['users_purge'] otherwise old users won't be removed.

HTTP Authentication

Config option: http-auth

LibreNMS will expect the user to have authenticated via your webservice already. At this stage it will need to assign a userlevel for that user which is done in one of two ways:

A user exists in MySQL still where the usernames match up.
A global guest user (which still needs to be added into MySQL:

$config['http_auth_guest'] = "guest";

This will then assign the userlevel for guest to all authenticated users.

HTTP Authentication / AD Authorization

Config option: ad-authorization

This module is a combination of http-auth and active_directory

LibreNMS will expect the user to have authenticated via your webservice already (e.g. using Kerberos Authentication in Apache) but will use Active Directory lookups to determine and assign the userlevel of a user. The userlevel will be calculated by using AD group membership information as the active_directory module does.

The configuration is the same as for the active_directory module with two extra, optional options: auth_ad_binduser and auth_ad_bindpassword. These should be set to a AD user with read capabilities in your AD Domain in order to be able to perform searches. If these options are omitted, the module will attempt an anonymous bind (which then of course must be allowed by your Active Directory server(s)).

There is also one extra option for controlling user information caching: auth_ldap_cache_ttl. This option allows to control how long user information (user_exists, userid, userlevel) are cached within the PHP Session. The default value is 300 seconds. To disable this caching (highly discourage) set this option to 0.

$config['auth_ad_binduser']     = "ad_binduser";
$config['auth_ad_bindpassword'] = "ad_bindpassword";
$config['auth_ldap_cache_ttl']  = 300;

HTTP Authentication / LDAP Authorization

Config option: ldap-authorization

This module is a combination of http-auth and ldap

LibreNMS will expect the user to have authenticated via your webservice already (e.g. using Kerberos Authentication in Apache) but will use LDAP to determine and assign the userlevel of a user. The userlevel will be calculated by using LDAP group membership information as the ldap module does.

The configuration is similar to the ldap module with one extra option: auth_ldap_cache_ttl. This option allows to control how long user information (user_exists, userid, userlevel) are cached within the PHP Session. The default value is 300 seconds. To disabled this caching (highly discourage) set this option to 0.

Standard config

$config['auth_mechanism'] = 'ldap-authorization';
$config['auth_ldap_server'] = 'ldap.example.com';               // Set server(s), space separated. Prefix with ldaps:// for ssl
$config['auth_ldap_suffix'] = ',ou=People,dc=example,dc=com';   // appended to usernames
$config['auth_ldap_groupbase'] = 'ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com'; // all groups must be inside this
$config['auth_ldap_groups']['admin']['roles'] = ['admin'];             // set admin group to admin role
$config['auth_ldap_groups']['pfy']['roles'] = ['global-read'];                // set pfy group to global read only role
$config['auth_ldap_groups']['support']['roles'] = ['user'];            // set support group as a normal user

Additional options (usually not needed)

$config['auth_ldap_version'] = 3; # v2 or v3
$config['auth_ldap_port'] = 389;                    // 389 or 636 for ssl
$config['auth_ldap_starttls'] = True;               // Enable TLS on port 389
$config['auth_ldap_prefix'] = 'uid=';               // prepended to usernames
$config['auth_ldap_group']  = 'cn=groupname,ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com'; // generic group with level 0
$config['auth_ldap_groupmemberattr'] = 'memberUid'; // attribute to use to see if a user is a member of a group
$config['auth_ldap_groupmembertype'] = 'username';  // username type to find group members by, either username (default), fulldn or puredn
$config['auth_ldap_emailattr'] = 'mail';            // attribute for email address
$config['auth_ldap_attr.uid'] = 'uid';              // attribute to check username against
$config['auth_ldap_userlist_filter'] = 'service=informatique'; // Replace 'service=informatique' by your ldap filter to limit the number of responses if you have an ldap directory with thousand of users
$config['auth_ldap_cache_ttl'] = 300;

LDAP bind user (optional)

If your ldap server does not allow anonymous bind, it is highly suggested to create a bind user, otherwise "remember me", alerting users, and the API will not work.

$config['auth_ldap_binduser'] = 'ldapbind'; // will use auth_ldap_prefix and auth_ldap_suffix
#$config['auth_ldap_binddn'] = 'CN=John.Smith,CN=Users,DC=MyDomain,DC=com'; // overrides binduser
$config['auth_ldap_bindpassword'] = 'password';

View/embedded graphs without being logged into LibreNMS

webui/graph

lnms config:set allow_unauth_graphs_cidr '["127.0.0.1/32"]'
lnms config:set allow_unauth_graphs true

Single Sign-on

The single sign-on mechanism is used to integrate with third party authentication providers that are managed outside of LibreNMS - such as ADFS, Shibboleth, EZProxy, BeyondCorp, and others. A large number of these methods use SAML the module has been written assuming the use of SAML, and therefore these instructions contain some SAML terminology, but it should be possible to use any software that works in a similar way.

In order to make use of the single sign-on module, you need to have an Identity Provider up and running, and know how to configure your Relying Party to pass attributes to LibreNMS via header injection or environment variables. Setting these up is outside of the scope of this documentation.

As this module deals with authentication, it is extremely careful about validating the configuration - if it finds that certain values in the configuration are not set, it will reject access rather than try and guess.

Basic Configuration

To get up and running, all you need to do is configure the following values:

$config['auth_mechanism']        = "sso";
$config['sso']['mode']           = "env";
$config['sso']['group_strategy'] = "static";
$config['sso']['static_level']   = 10;

This, along with the defaults, sets up a basic Single Sign-on setup that:

Reads values from environment variables
Automatically creates users when they're first seen
Automatically updates users with new values
Gives everyone privilege level 10

This happens to mimic the behaviour of http-auth, so if this is the kind of setup you want, you're probably better of just going and using that mechanism.

Security

If there is a proxy involved (e.g. EZProxy, Azure AD Application Proxy, NGINX, mod_proxy) it's essential that you have some means in place to prevent headers being injected between the proxy and the end user, and also prevent end users from contacting LibreNMS directly.

This should also apply to user connections to the proxy itself - the proxy must not be allowed to blindly pass through HTTP headers. modsecurity_ should be considered a minimum, with a full WAF being strongly recommended. This advice applies to the IDP too.

The mechanism includes very basic protection, in the form of an IP whitelist with should contain the source addresses of your proxies:

$config['sso']['trusted_proxies'] = ['127.0.0.1/8', '::1/128', '192.0.2.0', '2001:DB8::'];

This configuration item should contain an array with a list of IP addresses or CIDR prefixes that are allowed to connect to LibreNMS and supply environment variables or headers.

Advanced Configuration Options

User Attribute

If for some reason your relying party doesn't store the username in REMOTE_USER, you can override this choice.

$config['sso']['user_attr'] = 'HTTP_UID';

Note that the user lookup is a little special - normally headers are prefixed with HTTP_, however this is not the case for remote user - it's a special case. If you're using something different you need to figure out of the HTTP_ prefix is required or not yourself.

Automatic User Create/Update

These are enabled by default:

$config['sso']['create_users'] = true;
$config['sso']['update_users'] = true;

If these are not enabled, user logins will be (somewhat silently) rejected unless an administrator has created the account in advance. Note that in the case of SAML federations, unless release of the users true identity has been negotiated with the IDP, the username (probably ePTID) is not likely to be predicable.

Personalisation

If the attributes are being populated, you can instruct the mechanism to add additional information to the user's database entry:

$config['sso']['email_attr']    = "mail";
$config['sso']['realname_attr'] = "displayName";
$config['sso']['descr_attr']    = "unscoped-affiliation

Group Strategies

Static

As used above, static gives every single user the same privilege level. If you're working with a small team, or don't need access control, this is probably suitable.

Attribute

$config['sso']['group_strategy'] = "attribute";
$config['sso']['level_attr']     = "entitlement";

If your Relying Party is capable of calculating the necessary privilege level, you can configure the module to read the privilege number straight from an attribute. sso_level_attr should contain the name of the attribute that the Relying Party exposes to LibreNMS - as long as sso_mode is correctly set, the mechanism should find the value.

Group Map

This is the most flexible (and complex) way of assigning privileges.

$config['sso']['group_strategy']  = "map";
$config['sso']['group_attr']      = "member";
$config['sso']['group_level_map'] = ['librenms-admins' => 10, 'librenms-readers' => 1, 'librenms-billingcontacts' => 5];
$config['sso']['group_delimiter'] = ';';

This mechanism expects to find a delimited list of groups within the attribute that sso_group_attr points to. This should be an associative array of group name keys, with privilege levels as values. The mechanism will scan the list and find the highest privilege level that the user is entitled to, and assign that value to the user.

If there are no matches between the user's groups and the sso_group_level_map, the user will be assigned the privilege level specified in the sso_static_level variable, with a default of 0 (no access). This feature can be used to provide a default access level (such as read-only) to all authenticated users.

Additionally, this format may be specific to Shibboleth; other relying party software may need changes to the mechanism (e.g. mod_auth_mellon may create pseudo arrays).

There is an optional value for sites with large numbers of groups:

$config['sso']['group_filter']  = "/librenms-(.*)/i";

This filter causes the mechanism to only consider groups matching a regular expression.

Logout Behaviour

LibreNMS has no capability to log out a user authenticated via Single Sign-On - that responsibility falls to the Relying Party.

If your Relying Party has a magic URL that needs to be called to end a session, you can configure LibreNMS to direct the user to it:

# Example for Shibboleth
$config['auth_logout_handler'] = '/Shibboleth.sso/Logout';

# Example for oauth2-proxy
$config['auth_logout_handler'] = '/oauth2/sign_out';

This option functions independently of the Single Sign-on mechanism.

Complete Configuration

This configuration works on my deployment with a Shibboleth relying party, injecting environment variables, with the IDP supplying a list of groups.

$config['auth_mechanism'] = 'sso';
$config['auth_logout_handler'] = '/Shibboleth.sso/Logout';
$config['sso']['mode'] = 'env';
$config['sso']['create_users'] = true;
$config['sso']['update_users'] = true;
$config['sso']['realname_attr'] = 'displayName';
$config['sso']['email_attr'] = 'mail';
$config['sso']['group_strategy'] = 'map';
$config['sso']['group_attr'] = 'member';
$config['sso']['group_filter'] = '/(librenms-.*)/i';
$config['sso']['group_delimiter'] = ';';
$config['sso']['group_level_map'] = ['librenms-demo' => 11, 'librenms-globaladmin' => 10, 'librenms-globalread' => 5, 'librenms-lowpriv'=> 1];