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 \
    username=foo \
    password=bar

Via the API

The endpoint for the login is auth/userpass/login/<username>.

The password should be sent in the POST body encoded as JSON.

$ curl $VAULT_ADDR/v1/auth/userpass/login/mitchellh \
    -d '{ "password": "foo" }'

The response will be in JSON. For example:

{
  "lease_id": "",
  "renewable": false,
  "lease_duration": 0,
  "data": null,
  "auth": {
    "client_token": "c4f280f6-fdb2-18eb-89d3-589e2e834cdb",
    "policies": [
      "root"
    ],
    "metadata": {
      "username": "mitchellh"
    },
    "lease_duration": 0,
    "renewable": false
  }
}

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 path-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.