open-vault/website/source/docs/auth/userpass.html.md

layout	page_title	sidebar_current	description
docs	Auth Backend: Username & Password	docs-auth-userpass	The "userpass" auth backend allows users to authenticate with Vault using a username and password.

Auth Backend: Username & Password

Name: userpass

The "userpass" auth backend allows users to authenticate with Vault using a username and password combination.

The username/password combinations are configured directly to the auth backend using the users/ path. This backend cannot read usernames and passwords from an external source.

Authentication

Via the CLI

$ vault auth -method=userpass \
  -var="username=foo" \
  -var="password=bar"
...

Via the API

The endpoint for the login is /login/USERNAME.

Configuration

First, you must enable the username/password auth backend:

$ vault auth-enable userpass
Successfully enabled 'userpass' at 'userpass'!

Now when you run vault auth -methods, the username/password backend is available:

Path       Type      Description
token/     token     token based credentials
userpass/  userpass

To use the "userpass" auth backend, an operator must configure it with users that are allowed to authenticate. An example is shown below. Use vault help for more details.

$ vault write auth/userpass/users/mitchellh password=foo policies=root
...

The above creates a new user "mitchellh" with the password "foo" that will be associated with the "root" policy. This is the only configuration necessary.