Creating sample user in Kubernetes

In this guide, we will find out how to create a new user using Service Account mechanism of Kubernetes, grant this user admin permissions and log in to Dashboard using bearer token tied to this user.

Copy provided snippets to some xxx.yaml file and use kubectl create -f xxx.yaml to create them.

Create Service Account

We are creating Service Account with name admin-user in namespace kube-system first.

apiVersion: v1
kind: ServiceAccount
metadata:
  name: admin-user
  namespace: kube-system

Create ClusterRoleBinding

In most cases after provisioning our cluster using kops or kubeadm or any other popular tool admin Role already exists in the cluster. We can use it and create only RoleBinding for our ServiceAccount.

NOTE: apiVersion of ClusterRoleBinding resource may differ between Kubernetes versions. Starting from v1.8 it was promoted to rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1.

apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: ClusterRoleBinding
metadata:
  name: admin-user
roleRef:
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  kind: ClusterRole
  name: cluster-admin
subjects:
- kind: ServiceAccount
  name: admin-user
  namespace: kube-system

Bearer Token

Now we need to find token we can use to log in. Execute following command:

kubectl -n kube-system describe secret $(kubectl -n kube-system get secret | grep admin-user | awk '{print $1}')

It should print something like:

Name:         admin-user-token-6gl6l
Namespace:    kube-system
Labels:       <none>
Annotations:  kubernetes.io/service-account.name=admin-user
              kubernetes.io/service-account.uid=b16afba9-dfec-11e7-bbb9-901b0e532516

Type:  kubernetes.io/service-account-token

Data
====
ca.crt:     1025 bytes
namespace:  11 bytes
token:      eyJhbGciOiJSUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpc3MiOiJrdWJlcm5ldGVzL3NlcnZpY2VhY2NvdW50Iiwia3ViZXJuZXRlcy5pby9zZXJ2aWNlYWNjb3VudC9uYW1lc3BhY2UiOiJrdWJlLXN5c3RlbSIsImt1YmVybmV0ZXMuaW8vc2VydmljZWFjY291bnQvc2VjcmV0Lm5hbWUiOiJhZG1pbi11c2VyLXRva2VuLTZnbDZsIiwia3ViZXJuZXRlcy5pby9zZXJ2aWNlYWNjb3VudC9zZXJ2aWNlLWFjY291bnQubmFtZSI6ImFkbWluLXVzZXIiLCJrdWJlcm5ldGVzLmlvL3NlcnZpY2VhY2NvdW50L3NlcnZpY2UtYWNjb3VudC51aWQiOiJiMTZhZmJhOS1kZmVjLTExZTctYmJiOS05MDFiMGU1MzI1MTYiLCJzdWIiOiJzeXN0ZW06c2VydmljZWFjY291bnQ6a3ViZS1zeXN0ZW06YWRtaW4tdXNlciJ9.M70CU3lbu3PP4OjhFms8PVL5pQKj-jj4RNSLA4YmQfTXpPUuxqXjiTf094_Rzr0fgN_IVX6gC4fiNUL5ynx9KU-lkPfk0HnX8scxfJNzypL039mpGt0bbe1IXKSIRaq_9VW59Xz-yBUhycYcKPO9RM2Qa1Ax29nqNVko4vLn1_1wPqJ6XSq3GYI8anTzV8Fku4jasUwjrws6Cn6_sPEGmL54sq5R4Z5afUtv-mItTmqZZdxnkRqcJLlg2Y8WbCPogErbsaCDJoABQ7ppaqHetwfM_0yMun6ABOQbIwwl8pspJhpplKwyo700OSpvTT9zlBsu-b35lzXGBRHzv5g_RA

Now copy the token and paste it into Enter token field on log in screen.

Click Sign in button and that's it. You are now logged in as an admin.

In order to find out more about how to grant/deny permissions in Kubernetes read official authentication & authorization documentation.