awx/docs/auth

This folder describes third-party authentications supported by Ansible Tower. These authentications can be configured and enabled inside Tower.

When a user wants to log into Tower, she can explicitly choose some of the supported authentications to log in instead of Tower's own authentication using username and password. Here is a list of such authentications:

• Google OAuth2
• Github OAuth2
• Github Organization OAuth2
• Github Team OAuth2
• Microsoft Azure Active Directory (AD) OAuth2

On the other hand, the rest of authentication methods use the same types of login info as Tower(username and password), but authenticate using external auth systems rather than Tower's own database. If some of these methods are enabled, Tower will try authenticating using the enabled methods before Tower's own authentication method. In specific, it follows the order

• LDAP
• RADIUS
• TACACS+
• SAML

Tower will try authenticating against each enabled authentication method in the specified order, meaning if the same username and password is valid in multiple enabled auth methods (For example, both LDAP and TACACS+), Tower will only use the first positive match (In the above example, log a user in via LDAP and skip TACACS+).

Notes:

• SAML users, RADIUS users and TACACS+ users are categorized as 'Enterprise' users. The following rules apply to Enterprise users:

  • Enterprise users can only be created via the first successful login attempt from remote authentication backend.
  • Enterprise users cannot be created/authenticated if non-enterprise users with the same name has already been created in Tower.
  • Tower passwords of Enterprise users should always be empty and cannot be set by any user if there are enterprise backends enabled.
  • If enterprise backends are disabled, an Enterprise user can be converted to a normal Tower user by setting password field. But this operation is irreversible (The converted Tower user can no longer be treated as Enterprise user)