Configuring for SAML Authentication¶

Chef Manage can support logging in users via SAML authentication. In order to do so, there must be a Chef Automate Server that is configured to act as a SAML Identity Provider (IdP). When the Chef Automate Server is configured to do so, it will provide an OpenID Connect (OIDC) protocol end-point that Chef Manage can use to initiate authentication.

Configuring Chef Manage¶

To configure the Chef server management console, first add the following code to /etc/chef-manage/manage.rb:

saml.enabled true
saml.issuer_url '<AUTOMATE OIDC ENDPOINT>'

Second, store your OIDC client credentials with using the Secrets Management commands:

$ chef-server-ctl set-secret saml client_id '<CLIENT ID>'
$ chef-server-ctl set-secret saml client_secret '<CLIENT SECRET>'

The issuer_url property should be set to something like 'https://<yourChefAutomateDomain>/api/v0'. Also, the client_id must be known to the Chef Automate server. For development purposes only, you may also need to turn off the TLS verification for the OIDC client by adding

saml.verify_tls false

to your Chef Manage configuration.

Finally, run chef-manage-ctl reconfigure to apply these settings.

Warning

You cannot have both LDAP and SAML authentication enabled at the same time. If you do, the reconfigure will fail with an appropriate error message.

Configuring the Chef Automate Server¶

See Integrate Chef Automate with SAML for information on how to configure it to act like an OpenID Connect server.