Local Users

Local Cluster Users

The environment includes a dedicated virtual machine running an identity management platform called Kanidm. This allows you to manage local users, groups and SSH keys centrally across the cluster.

To get that OS image enabled for your user, please contact support.

Setup details

The identity management service is reachable on address auth.cluster.verda.internal from within the cluster.

It runs inside a docker container called kanidm and the service node has the kanidm CLI tool installed that you will use to manage:

• Groups

• Local users with or without root access

• SSH public keys per user

Important Note on Groups: If you use the suggested group name cluster_users, members are automatically added to the docker group on the nodes. If you choose a different group name, you must manually update the kanidm-unixd and sshd configurations on your jumphost and worker nodes.

Groups and User Creation

Login to the service node by using the jumphost as an SSH jumphost:

ssh -J [email protected] [email protected]

Recover the initial password for user idm_admin:

docker exec -i -t kanidm kanidmd recover-account idm_admin

Initialize the kanidm CLI using the password found in the above recover-account:

# kanidm login --name idm_admin
Enter password: [hidden]
Login Success for [email protected]

Create groups with GIDs great than 65536:

kanidm group create cluster_users
kanidm group posix set cluster_users --gidnumber 70000
# kanidm group create cluster_admins
# kanidm group posix set cluster_admins --gidnumber 70001

Creating an example user and add it to the cluster_users group:

kanidm person create jsmith1 "John Smith"
kanidm person posix set jsmith1 --shell /bin/bash
kanidm person posix set jsmith1 --gidnumber 76001
kanidm group add-members cluster_users jsmith1

kanidm person ssh add-publickey jsmith1 'jsmith_key_1' "ssh-rsa AAA..."

kanidm person posix show jsmith1

Accessing the Cluster

One configured, users can login to the jumphost directly:

ssh [email protected]

Internal SSH & Node Access

• Home Directories: These are stored on a shared NFS mount and are available across all nodes.

• SSH Agent Forwarding: For security reasons, we recommend leaving agent forwarding disabled.

• Internal Keys: To allow your user to SSH from the jumphost to worker nodes, generate an internal key pair:

ssh [email protected]
ssh-keygen -t ssh-rsa
cat $HOME/.ssh/id_rsa.pub >> $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys

To avoid "Host Verification" prompts when moving between nodes, update your known_hosts file:

for host in $(grep datacrunch.io /etc/hosts | awk '{print $2}'); do 
  ssh-keyscan -H $host >> $HOME/.ssh/known_hosts
done

Elevated Privileges

If you wish to grant sudo access to the cluster_admins group across the compute nodes, run the following command from the jumphost:

pdsh -g compute_node 'sudo bash -c "echo \"%cluster_admins ALL=(ALL:ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL\" > /etc/sudoers.d/cluster_admins"'