Working with multiple users

Juju has an internal user framework that allows for the sharing of controllers and models. To achieve this, a Juju user can be created, disabled, and have rights granted and revoked. Users remote to the system that created a controller can use their own Juju client to log in to the controller and manage the environment based on the rights conferred. Multiple users can be accommodated by the same Juju client.

Various categories of users can be defined based on the permissions they have been granted. In turn, these permissions lead to certain abilities. See page User types and abilities for an overview.

Creating users

There are two ways users are introduced into Juju:

1. with the bootstrap command, which creates the initial controller administrator
2. with the add-user command, which creates a generic user

In the second case the user gets a password set up but in the first case the user is left without one. This is why if such an admin tries to log out (logout) before creating a password the command will fail and a warning will be emitted. An admin should, therefore, create a password once the controller is created:

juju bootstrap aws
juju change-user-password

In a Juju context, the term "credential" is related to the accessing of a chosen backing cloud, and not to Juju users. See Credentials for guidance.

Creating a generic user

When the add-user command is used, a string of text is produced that encodes information about the user and the controller. This string is supplied to the intended operator who will use it to register the controller using their own Juju client.

The user will be asked to enter an arbitrary (but hopefully meaningful) name to the controller as well as create a password for themselves. The controller name needs to be unique within the context of the client. The user's password is stored on the controller.

To create user 'mat' a controller administrator uses the add-user command:

juju add-user mat

This will produce output similar to:

User "mat" added
Please send this command to mat:
    juju register ME0TA21hdDAWExQxMC4xNDkuMTMzLjIwOToxNzA3MAQg7D-RDR8cnioqd7ctEoCjyDzaprK4wXodvfMBBrgBUKETDGx4ZC1iaW9uaWMtMQAA

"mat" has not been granted access to any models. You can use "juju grant" to grant access.

An administrator provides the command (manually) to the intended operator, who will execute it:

juju register ME0TA21hdDAWExQxMC4xNDkuMTMzLjIwOToxNzA3MAQg7D-RDR8cnioqd7ctEoCjyDzaprK4wXodvfMBBrgBUKETDGx4ZC1iaW9uaWMtMQAA

Sample user session:

Enter a new password: 
Confirm password: 
Enter a name for this controller [lxd-bionic-1]: lxd-bionic-1
Initial password successfully set for mat.

Welcome, mat. You are now logged into "lxd-bionic-1".

There are no models available. You can add models with
"juju add-model", or you can ask an administrator or owner
of a model to grant access to that model with "juju grant".

The name of the original controller, in this case 'lxd-bionic-1', is offered as a default controller name.

Logins and logouts

A user who has just registered a controller is automatically logged in to that controller.

A user can log out at any time:

juju logout

To log in to a controller, the operator needs to specify both the user and the controller:

juju login -u mat -c lxd-bionic-1

The following is a quick way to determine the current user (as well as the current controller and model):

juju whoami

Example output:

Controller:  lxd-bionic-1
Model:       <no-current-model>
User:        mat

Disabling and re-enabling users

To immediately sever a user's communication with their controller the disable-user command is employed. To re-establish communication the enable-user command is used.

To disable the user 'mike':

juju disable-user mike

To re-enable:

juju enable-user mike

Disabled users are suppressed in the output to the users command unless the --all option is used, whereby the output will show "disabled":

Controller: cstack

Name    Display name  Access     Date created    Last connection
admin*  admin         superuser  2018-12-12      just now
mike                  login      17 minutes ago  never connected (disabled)

Changing user passwords

A user is prompted to set a password when registering a controller. This password can subsequently be changed either by the user himself or by a controller admin. For the user, it is simply a matter of running:

juju change-user-password

The admin user supplies the name of the user whose password is to be changed:

juju change-user-password mike

Then simply follow the prompts to enter and confirm a new password.

Re-generating a lost registration string

If the original registering token fails to work or is lost a new token can be generated by a controller admin. This is done through the use of the --reset option in conjunction with the change-user-password command. For example, to generate a new token for 'jon':

juju change-user-password jon --reset

The previous token will be invalidated, and the user should register with the new token.

Managing models in a multi-user context

In this section we go over the various ways models can be managed in a multi-user context. Subtopics include:

• Providing model ownership during model creation
• Model access
• Controller access

Providing model ownership during model creation

The model creator becomes, by default, the model owner. However, the creation process does allow for owner designation. To add model 'staging' and designate user 'neo' as the owner:

juju add-model --owner=neo staging

See the Adding a model page for the basics on adding models.

Model access

A controller admin uses the grant command to give a user 'read', 'write', or 'admin' access to a model:

• read: A user can view the state of a model (e.g. models, machines, and status)
• write: In addition to 'read' abilities, a user can modify/configure models (e.g. model-config and model-defaults).
• admin: In addition to 'write' abilities, a user can perform model upgrades (upgrade-model) and connect to machines via juju ssh. Makes the user an effective model owner. See Machine authentication for how to connect to machines.

Here we give 'bob' write access to model 'genesis':

juju grant bob write genesis

Current model access for a user can be viewed by specifying the user with the models command. Here we inspect the access enjoyed by user 'mat':

juju models --user mat

Sample output:

Controller: lxd-bionic-1

Model            Cloud/Region         Status     Access  Last connection
admin/euphoric*  localhost/localhost  available  read    never connected

Notice how the model name is prepended with the remote user's name, which is the 'owner' of the model.

Access can be viewed on a per-model basis by using the show-model command. Here we query model 'mara':

juju show-model mara

Partial output:

 users:
    admin:
      display-name: admin
      access: admin
      last-connection: never connected
    jim:
      access: write
      last-connection: never connected
    pete:
      access: admin
      last-connection: never connected

Controller access

A controller actually refers to a special kind of model that acts as the nucleus for each cloud environment. In addition to the three levels of model access, three further levels of access can be applied to a controller:

• login: the standard access level, enabling a user to log in to a controller.
• add-model: in addition to login access, a user can add and remove models.
• superuser: makes a user an effective controller administrator.

The command syntax for controller access is the same as for model access, only without the need to specify a model. As usual, with no controller specified via the -c option, the current controller is the assumed target.

Here we give 'jim' the 'add-model' permission:

juju grant jim add-model

Current controller access for all users registered to a controller can be viewed with the users command. Example output:

Controller: azure-1

Name    Display name  Access     Date created  Last connection
admin*  admin         superuser  2018-12-14    just now
bob                   login      1 hour ago    50 minutes ago
jim                   add-model  2018-12-14    58 minutes ago

In addition, a controller admin can use the show-user command to get controller access on a per-user basis, in addition to other information on the user.

Revoking access

The revoke command is used by a controller administrator to demote a user's access to the next lowest level. That is, if a user has 'write' access to a model and 'read' is revoked then both 'read' and 'write' are removed. This works similarly for controller access. If a user has 'superuser' access and 'add-model' is revoked then both 'add-model' and 'superuser' are removed.

If user 'bob' has 'write' access to model 'gotcha', use the following to remove all access to this model:

juju revoke bob read gotcha

Confirm this action with juju models --user bob.

If user 'jim' has 'superuser' access to controller 'waves', use the following to leave the user with just 'login' access:

juju revoke -c waves jim add-model

Confirm this action with juju show-user --user jim.

As usual, if a controller is not specified (-c) the default controller is the currently active one.

Next steps

To explore using Juju with multiple users consider the following tutorials:

• Multi-user basic setup
• Multi-user external setup