Configure LDAP authentication

Configure InfluxDB Enterprise to use LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) to:

Validate user permissions
Synchronize InfluxDB and LDAP so each LDAP request doesn’t need to be queried

LDAP requires JWT authentication. For more information, see Configure authentication using JWT tokens.

To configure InfluxDB Enterprise to support LDAP, all users must be managed in the remote LDAP service. If LDAP is configured and enabled, users must authenticate through LDAP, including users who may have existed before enabling LDAP.

Configure LDAP for an InfluxDB Enterprise cluster
Sample LDAP configuration
Troubleshoot LDAP in InfluxDB Enterprise

Configure LDAP for an InfluxDB Enterprise cluster

To use LDAP with an InfluxDB Enterprise cluster, do the following:

Configure data nodes
Configure meta nodes
Create, verify, and upload the LDAP configuration file
Restart meta and data nodes

Configure data nodes

Update the following settings in each data node configuration file (/etc/influxdb/influxdb.conf):

Under [http], enable HTTP authentication by setting auth-enabled to true. (Or set the corresponding environment variable INFLUXDB_HTTP_AUTH_ENABLED to true.)
Configure the HTTP shared secret to validate requests using JSON web tokens (JWT) and sign each HTTP payload with the secret and username. Set the [http] configuration setting for shared-secret, or the corresponding environment variable INFLUXDB_HTTP_SHARED_SECRET.
If you’re enabling authentication on meta nodes, you must also include the following configurations:
- INFLUXDB_META_META_AUTH_ENABLED environment variable, or [http] configuration setting meta-auth-enabled, is set to true. This value must be the same value as the meta node’s meta.auth-enabled configuration.
- INFLUXDB_META_META_INTERNAL_SHARED_SECRET, or the corresponding [meta] configuration setting meta-internal-shared-secret, is set a secret value. This value must be the same value as the meta node’s meta.internal-shared-secret.

Configure meta nodes

Update the following settings in each meta node configuration file (/etc/influxdb/influxdb-meta.conf):

Configure the meta node META shared secret to validate requests using JSON web tokens (JWT) and sign each HTTP payload with the username and shared secret.
Set the [meta] configuration setting internal-shared-secret to "<internal-shared-secret>". (Or set the INFLUXDB_META_INTERNAL_SHARED_SECRET environment variable.)
Set the [meta] configuration setting meta.ldap-allowed to true on all meta nodes in your cluster. (Or set the INFLUXDB_META_LDAP_ALLOWEDenvironment variable.)

Authenticate your connection to InfluxDB

To authenticate your InfluxDB connection, run the following command, replacing username:password with your credentials:

curl -u username:password -XPOST "http://localhost:8086/..."

For more detail on authentication, see Authentication and authorization in InfluxDB.

Create, verify, and upload the LDAP configuration file

To create a sample LDAP configuration file, run the following command:
```
influxd-ctl ldap sample-config
```
Save the sample file and edit as needed for your LDAP server. For detail, see the sample LDAP configuration file below.
To use fine-grained authorization (FGA) with LDAP, you must map InfluxDB Enterprise roles to key-value pairs in the LDAP database. For more information, see Fine-grained authorization in InfluxDB Enterprise. The InfluxDB admin user doesn’t include permissions for InfluxDB Enterprise roles.
Restart all meta and data nodes in your InfluxDB Enterprise cluster to load your updated configuration.
On each meta node, run:
sysvinit systemd
```
service influxdb-meta restart
```
```
sudo systemctl restart influxdb-meta
```
On each data node, run:
sysvinit systemd
```
service influxdb restart
```
```
sudo systemctl restart influxdb
```

To verify your LDAP configuration, run:

influxd-ctl ldap verify -ldap-config /path/to/ldap.toml

To load your LDAP configuration file, run the following command:
```
influxd-ctl ldap set-config /path/to/ldap.toml
```

Sample LDAP configuration

The following is a sample configuration file that connects to a publicly available LDAP server.

A DN (“distinguished name”) uniquely identifies an entry and describes its position in the directory information tree (DIT) hierarchy. The DN of an LDAP entry is similar to a file path on a file system. DNs refers to multiple DN entries.

enabled = true

[[servers]]
  enabled = true

[[servers]]
  host = "<LDAPserver>"
  port = 389

  # Security mode for LDAP connection to this server.
  # The recommended security is set "starttls" by default. This uses an initial unencrypted connection
  # and upgrades to TLS as the first action against the server,
  # per the LDAPv3 standard.
  # Other options are "starttls+insecure" to behave the same as starttls
  # but skip server certificate verification, or "none" to use an unencrypted connection.
  security = "starttls"

  # Credentials to use when searching for a user or group.
  bind-dn = "cn=read-only-admin,dc=example,dc=com"
  bind-password = "password"

  # Base DNs to use when applying the search-filter to discover an LDAP user.
  search-base-dns = [
    "dc=example,dc=com",
  ]

  # LDAP filter to discover a user's DN.
  # %s will be replaced with the provided username.
  search-filter = "(uid=%s)"
  # On Active Directory you might use "(sAMAccountName=%s)".

  # Base DNs to use when searching for groups.
  group-search-base-dns = ["dc=example,dc=com"]

  # LDAP filter to identify groups that a user belongs to.
  # %s will be replaced with the user's DN.
  group-membership-search-filter = "(&(objectClass=groupOfUniqueNames)(uniqueMember=%s))"
  # On Active Directory you might use "(&(objectClass=group)(member=%s))".

  # Attribute to use to determine the "group" in the group-mappings section.
  group-attribute = "ou"
  # On Active Directory you might use "cn".

  # LDAP filter to search for a group with a particular name.
  # This is used when warming the cache to load group membership.
  group-search-filter = "(&(objectClass=groupOfUniqueNames)(cn=%s))"
  # On Active Directory you might use "(&(objectClass=group)(cn=%s))".

  # Attribute of a group that contains the DNs of the group's members.
  group-member-attribute = "uniqueMember"
  # On Active Directory you might use "member".

  # Create an administrator role in InfluxDB and then log in as a member of the admin LDAP group. Only members of a group with the administrator role can complete admin tasks.
  # For example, if tesla is the only member of the `italians` group, you must log in as tesla/password.
  admin-groups = ["italians"]

  # These two roles would have to be created by hand if you want these LDAP group memberships to do anything.
  [[servers.group-mappings]]
    group = "mathematicians"
    role = "arithmetic"

  [[servers.group-mappings]]
    group = "scientists"
    role = "laboratory"

Troubleshoot LDAP in InfluxDB Enterprise

InfluxDB Enterprise does not recognize a new LDAP server
User cannot log in after updating their password in the LDAP server

InfluxDB Enterprise does not recognize a new LDAP server

If you ever replace an LDAP server with a new one, you need to update your InfluxDB Enterprise LDAP configuration file to point to the new server. However, InfluxDB Enterprise may not recognize or honor the updated configuration.

For InfluxDB Enterprise to recognize an LDAP configuration pointing to a new LDAP server, do the following:

Not recommended in production InfluxDB Enterprise clusters

Performing the following process on a production cluster may have unintended consequences. Moving to a new LDAP server constitutes and infrastructure change and may better be handled through a cluster migration. For assistance, reach out to InfluxData support.

On each meta node, update the auth-enabled setting to false in your influxdb-meta.conf configuration file to temporarily disable authentication.
```
[meta]
  auth-enabled = false
```
Restart all meta nodes to load the updated configuration. On each meta node, run:
sysvinit systemd
```
service influxdb-meta restart
```
```
sudo systemctl restart influxdb-meta
```
On each meta node, create, verify, and upload the new LDAP configuration file.
On each meta node, update the auth-enabled setting to true in your influxdb-meta.conf configuration file to reenable authentication.
```
[meta]
  auth-enabled = true
```
Restart all meta nodes to load the updated configuration. On each meta node, run:
sysvinit systemd
```
service influxdb-meta restart
```
```
sudo systemctl restart influxdb-meta
```

User cannot log in after updating their password in the LDAP server

LDAP credentials are cached on InfluxDB Enterprise data nodes. If credentials change in the LDAP server, the cached credentials need to be purged and the cache refreshed to add the updated credentials.

Use the influxd-ctl ldap purge-cache command to purge LDAP credential caches on data nodes.
```
influxd-ctl ldap purge-cache
```
Use the influxd-ctl ldap warm-cache command to warm LDAP credential caches on data nodes.
```
influxd-ctl ldap warm-cache
```

Was this page helpful?

Thank you for your feedback!

Support and feedback

Thank you for being part of our community! We welcome and encourage your feedback and bug reports for InfluxDB and this documentation. To find support, use the following resources:

Customers with an annual or support contract can contact InfluxData Support.

Edit this page Submit docs issue Submit InfluxDB issue