Service tokens

Overview

Using Service tokens it’s possible to authenticate to SUSE Observability without having configured a user account. This is useful for situations where you want to use SUSE Observability from headless services like a CI server. In such a scenario you typically don’t want to provision a user account in your identity provider.

Manage service tokens

Service tokens can be managed via the sts CLI. The following commands are available:

> sts service-token --help
Manage service tokens.

Usage:
  sts service-token [command]

Available Commands:
  create      Create a service token
  delete      Delete a service token
  list        List service tokens

Use "sts service-token [command] --help" for more information about a command.

It’s also possible to set up a bootstrap service token when installing SUSE Observability.

Create service tokens

To create a service token for an installed instance of SUSE Observability, you can use the new sts CLI.

sts service-token create

Note that the service token will only be displayed once. It isn’t possible to see the token again.

This command takes the following command line arguments:

Flag Description

Flag	Description
`--name`	The name of the service token
`--expiration`	The expiration date of the service token, the format is yyyy-MM-dd. The expiration is optional.
`--roles`	A comma separated list of roles to assign to the service token

--name

The name of the service token

--expiration

The expiration date of the service token, the format is yyyy-MM-dd. The expiration is optional.

--roles

A comma separated list of roles to assign to the service token

For example, the command below will create a service token with the name my-service-token and the role stackstate-power-user:

> sts service-token create --name my-service-token --roles stackstate-power-user
✅ Service token created: svctok-aaaaa-bbbb-ccccc-ddddd

Set up a bootstrap service token

When installing SUSE Observability, it’s possible to bootstrap it with a (temporary) service token. This allows for using the CLI without first interacting with SUSE Observability and obtaining an API token from the UI. In order to set this up, you can add the following snippet to the SUSE Observability configuration file:

To configure SUSE Observability to create a bootstrap service token on Kubernetes, The following values need to be added to the file authentication.yaml. For example

stackstate:
  authentication:
    serviceToken:
      bootstrap:
        token: <token>
        roles:
          - stackstate-power-user
        ttl: 24h

Follow the steps below to configure SUSE Observability to create a bootstrap service token:

In authentication.yaml - add the bootstrap token:
- token - The token that will be created on (initial) start of SUSE Observability.
- roles - An array of roles that will be assigned to the bootstrap token.
- ttl - Optional. The time-to-live for the service token, expressed as a duration string.
Store the file authentication.yaml together with the values.yaml from the SUSE Observability installation instructions.

Run a Helm upgrade to apply the changes.

 helm upgrade \
   --install \
   --namespace suse-observability \
   --values values.yaml \
   --values authentication.yaml \
 suse-observability \
 suse-observability/suse-observability

Note:

The first run of the helm upgrade command will result in pods restarting, which may cause a short interruption of availability.
Include authentication.yaml on every helm upgrade run.
The authentication configuration is stored as a Kubernetes secret.

Setup the bootstrap service token from an external secret

When the bootstrap token should come from an external secret, follow these steps and add the following data:

kind: Secret
metadata:
   name: "<custom-secret-name>"
type: Opaque
data:
  bootstrap_token: <base64 of token>

This token can be added to the secret next to the data that is already there.

List service tokens

The ID, name, expiration date and roles of all created service tokens can be seen using the new sts CLI. For example:

> sts service-token list
ID              | NAME             | EXPIRATION | ROLES
107484341630693 | my-service-token |            | [stackstate-power-user]

Delete service tokens

A service token can be deleted using the new sts CLI. Pass the ID of the service token as an argument. For example:

> sts service-token delete 107484341630693
✅ Service token deleted: 107484341630693

Use service tokens

Once created, a service token can be used to authenticate to SUSE Observability from a headless service. To do this you can either use the CLI or directly talk to the API.

SUSE Observability `sts` CLI

A service token can be used for authentication with the sts CLI. For details, see the CLI documentation.

SUSE Observability APIs

To use a service token to talk directly to the SUSE Observability Base API, add it to the header of the request in one of the following ways:

In the Authorization header:

  > curl -X GET -H "Authorization: ApiKey <TOKEN>" http://localhost:8080/api/server/status

In the X-API-Key header:

  > curl -X GET -H "X-API-Key: <TOKEN>" http://localhost:8080/api/server/status

➡️ Learn more about the SUSE Observability APIs