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OAuth 2 Proxy Provider

The Backstage @backstage/plugin-auth-backend package comes with an oauth2Proxy authentication provider that can authenticate users by using a oauth2-proxy in front of an actual Backstage instance. This enables to reuse existing authentications within a cluster. In general the oauth2-proxy supports all OpenID Connect providers, for more details check this list of supported providers.

Note

OAuth2 Proxy does not provide a way to authenticate requests, you must instead ensure that your Backstage instance is only accessible through the OAuth2 Proxy. If you need more strict validation, consider using a different provider.

Configuration​

The provider configuration can be added to your app-config.yaml under the root auth configuration:

app-config.yaml
auth:
  environment: development
  providers:
    oauth2Proxy:
      signIn:
        resolvers:
          # See https://backstage.io/docs/auth/oauth2-proxy/provider#resolvers for more resolvers
          - resolver: forwardedUserMatchingUserEntityName

Resolvers​

This provider includes several resolvers out of the box that you can use:

  • emailMatchingUserEntityProfileEmail: Matches the email address from the auth provider with the User entity that has a matching spec.profile.email. If no match is found it will throw a NotFoundError.
  • emailLocalPartMatchingUserEntityName: Matches the local part of the email address from the auth provider with the User entity that has a matching name. If no match is found it will throw a NotFoundError.
  • forwardedUserMatchingUserEntityName: Matches the value in the x-forwarded-user header from the auth provider with the User entity that has a matching name. If no match is found it will throw a NotFoundError.
Note

The resolvers will be tried in order, but will only be skipped if they throw a NotFoundError.

If these resolvers do not fit your needs you can build a custom resolver, this is covered in the Building Custom Resolvers section of the Sign-in Identities and Resolvers documentation.

Backend Installation​

To add the provider to the backend we will first need to install the package by running this command:

from your Backstage root directory
yarn --cwd packages/backend add @backstage/plugin-auth-backend-module-oauth2-proxy-provider

Then we will need to this line:

in packages/backend/src/index.ts
backend.add(import('@backstage/plugin-auth-backend'));
backend.add(
  import('@backstage/plugin-auth-backend-module-oauth2-proxy-provider'),
);

Adding the provider to the Backstage frontend​

See Sign-In with Proxy Providers for pointers on how to set up the sign-in page, and to also make it work smoothly for local development. You'll use oauth2Proxy as the provider name.

If you provide a custom sign in resolver, you can skip the signIn block entirely.