Evaggelos Balaskas - System Engineer

In my previous post I used Authelia in front of a self-hosted service to handle authentication before users are allowed. That works well when there is a human using a browser. Authelia can also act as an OAuth2 / OpenID Connect provider, which means applications can authenticate and obtain tokens without needing access from a user’s actual password.

In this article, I will enable OIDC, then register a small test client and verify that token generation works correctly. I am not connecting a “real” application yet, as it will be the subject of my next blog post.

You don’t need to write any code for this. Everything can be tested from the terminal with curl.

What you need before starting

I am assuming you already have the Authelia setup from the previous article running with docker compose.

You’ll also need:

• openssl
• curl
• optionally jq, which makes JSON output easier to read :)

On Arch:

sudo pacman -S jq curl openssl

On Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo apt -y install jq curl openssl

I’m keeping the same directory structure as before:

./authelia/
├── authelia.env
├── docker-compose.yaml
├── config/
│   └── configuration.yml
└── secrets/
    ├── JWT_SECRET
    ├── LDAP_PASSWORD
    ├── SESSION_SECRET
    └── STORAGE_ENCRYPTION_KEY

We’ll add two more files under secrets/ and extend configuration.yml.

What is OAuth ?

Before getting into the configuration, there are three (3) terms that we need to know.

Client

A client is simply an application that Authelia knows about and allows to request tokens.

In this example the client will be called:

test-client

Client secret

This is essentially the password belonging to the application.

It is not a user’s password.

The client uses it’s ID together with this secret when requesting a token.

Token

A token is a temporary credential issued by Authelia. Instead of passing usernames and passwords between services, applications can work with these short-lived credentials. Which is great, because if a bad actor “read” this token, it’s not like your username/password and only lives for a minute or two!

Step 1 - Generate the Authelia OIDC secrets

So, Authelia needs an HMAC secret and a private key for its OIDC provider.

From inside the ./authelia directory, run the below commands:

# This command generates a secure, random string of characters
openssl rand -hex 64 | tr -d 'n' > ./secrets/OIDC_HMAC_SECRET

# This command generates a RSA Private Key
openssl genrsa -out ./secrets/OIDC_PRIVATE_KEY 4096

New secrets:

OIDC_HMAC_SECRET

OIDC_PRIVATE_KEY

The HMAC secret is used internally by Authelia.

The RSA private key will be used for signing tokens so they can later be verified.

Change the permissions of secret files

chmod 600 ./secrets/OIDC_HMAC_SECRET ./secrets/OIDC_PRIVATE_KEY

Step 2 - Create a test client secret

For testing I shall register a client called:

test-client

First generate a random secret for it:

openssl rand -hex 32

BE Careful , this is a different random key than the above !

example output:

f8dfed59027a5fb575929edde48f5117fb199a504b92a699351a1ab8caed05cf

Save the output temporarily somewhere safe.

You will need two versions of this secret:

1. the plain-text value, which the client will use later
2. a hashed version, which goes into Authelia’s configuration

Generate the hash with Authelia itself:

export YOUR_RANDOM_CLIENT_SECRET="< your random secret here >"

docker compose exec authelia authelia crypto hash generate pbkdf2
  --variant sha512
  --password "${YOUR_RANDOM_CLIENT_SECRET}"
  --no-confirm

The result should look roughly like:

Digest: $pbkdf2-sha512$...

Save it the hashed secret to a new secret file:

docker compose exec authelia authelia crypto hash generate pbkdf2
  --variant sha512
  --password "${YOUR_RANDOM_CLIENT_SECRET}"
  --no-confirm | awk '{print $NF}' > ./secrets/OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET_HASH

Keep the original plain-text secret. We will need it when testing the token endpoint.

Step 3 - Configure Athelia OIDC provider

Why some secrets are variables and some files?

Ideally we want to have a dynamic setup to easily rotate secrets etc, but and althouth authelia -technically- allows you to pass complex JSON objects via environment variables, it is messy and prune to errors. Especially with intentation and formating.

Open:

./config/configuration.yml

and add a new top-level identity_providers section.

Do not remove any existing configuration.

identity_providers:

  # OpenID Connect (Identity Provider)
  oidc:
    # hmac_secret is now handled by docker-compose.yaml!
    # hmac_secret: '<paste the contents of OIDC_HMAC_SECRET here>'

    # The JWK's issuer configures JSON Web Keys
    jwks:
      - key_id: 'primary'
        algorithm: 'RS256'
        use: 'sig'
        key: {{ secret "/config/secrets/OIDC_PRIVATE_KEY" | mindent 10 "|" | msquote }}

    # Clients is a list of registered clients and their configuration.
    clients:
      - client_id: 'test-client'
        client_name: 'Test client for OIDC'
        # client_secret: '<paste the hashed secret from Step 2 here>'
        # or
        # client_secret: <read it from volume mount'
        client_secret: {{ secret "/config/secrets/OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET_HASH" }}

        public: false

        authorization_policy: 'one_factor'

        token_endpoint_auth_method: 'client_secret_post'

        scopes:
          - 'test-scope'

        grant_types:
          - 'client_credentials'

        response_types: []

update docker compose

and update docker compose yaml file to add secret and envirnment variable:

services:
  authelia:
    # ... your other authelia config ...

    volumes:
      - ./config:/config
      # Mount the private key file generated in the blog post into the container
      - ./secrets/OIDC_PRIVATE_KEY:/config/secrets/OIDC_PRIVATE_KEY:ro
      - ./secrets/OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET_HASH:/config/secrets/OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET_HASH:ro

    environment:
      # ...
      # Enable the template filter so Authelia can parse the {{ secret }} syntax
      - X_AUTHELIA_CONFIG_FILTERS=template
      # Notice the _FILE suffix at the end of the variable name
      - AUTHELIA_IDENTITY_PROVIDERS_OIDC_HMAC_SECRET_FILE=/run/secrets/AUTHELIA_IDENTITY_PROVIDERS_OIDC_HMAC_SECRET

    secrets:
      # ...
      - AUTHELIA_IDENTITY_PROVIDERS_OIDC_HMAC_SECRET

secrets:
  # ...
  AUTHELIA_IDENTITY_PROVIDERS_OIDC_HMAC_SECRET:
    file: ./secrets/OIDC_HMAC_SECRET

Alternative you can print the two secret files with:

cat ./secrets/OIDC_HMAC_SECRET

cat ./secrets/OIDC_PRIVATE_KEY

and copy their contents into the configuration.

client fields

A few fields are worth pointing out.

grant_types

We’re using:

grant_types:
  - 'client_credentials'

The client credentials flow is useful for machine-to-machine authentication.

There is no browser login involved. The application authenticates using their client_id and client_secret.

For what I want to test here, this is the simplest option.

scopes

For the time beging I am using:

scopes:
  - 'test-scope'

There is nothing special about the name. It is just a test scope that we will request later with curl.

Also, be careful with the YAML indentation. A misplaced space is enough to break the configuration. Ask me how I know this!

Step 4 - Validate the configuration

Before restarting anything, validate the configuration:

docker compose run --rm authelia authelia config validate --config /config/configuration.yml

If everything is correct, you should see:

Configuration parsed and loaded successfully without errors.

example output:

~> sudo docker compose run --rm authelia authelia config validate --config /config/configuration.yml

Container traefik-authelia-run-7afd8b44e1ad Creating
Container traefik-authelia-run-7afd8b44e1ad Created
Configuration parsed and loaded successfully without errors.

If validation fails, fix the configuration before continuing.

In my experience, indentation and incorrectly pasted keys are the first things worth checking.

Now restart Authelia:

docker compose restart authelia

# docker compose ps authelia

NAME          IMAGE                                       COMMAND                  SERVICE       CREATED          STATUS                    PORTS
authelia      authelia/authelia:4.39                      "/app/entrypoint.sh"     authelia      15 seconds ago   Up 14 seconds (healthy)   9091/tcp

watch the logs:

docker compose logs -f authelia

Make sure Authelia starts normally and there are no OIDC related configuration errors.

Press Ctrl+C once you’re satisfied everything is running or d to detach if started authelia with docker compose up authelia

Step 5 - Request a token

Now we can test the authelia oidc provider.

Replace:

authelia.example.org

with your actual Authelia hostname.

and also:

YOUR_RANDOM_CLIENT_SECRET

with the original plain-text secret generated in Step 2.

Run:

curl -s -X POST https://authelia.example.org/api/oidc/token
  -d 'grant_type=client_credentials'
  -d 'client_id=test-client'
  -d 'client_secret=PASTE_YOUR_RANDOM_SECRET_HERE'
  -d 'scope=test-scope' | jq

A successful response should look similar to this:

{
  "access_token": "authelia_at_< ... >",
  "expires_in": 3599,
  "scope": "test-scope",
  "token_type": "bearer"
}

At this point Authelia has successfully authenticated the client and issued an access token for 1hour !

Copy the value of:

access_token

because we will use it in the next test.

my preferable way:

ACCESS_TOKEN=$(curl -s -X POST https://authelia.example.org/api/oidc/token   -d 'grant_type=client_credentials'   -d 'client_id=test-client'   -d "client_s
ecret=${YOUR_RANDOM_CLIENT_SECRET}"  -d 'scope=test-scope' | jq -r .access_token)

If you get an error, these are the first things I’d check:

• invalid_client — verify the client_id and client secret
• invalid_scope — make sure the requested scope matches the configured scope
• unauthorized_client — check that client_credentials is included under grant_types

Step 6 - Introspect the token

Generating a token is only half the test.

I also want to verify that Authelia can recognise the token afterwards and report whether it is still valid.

That’s what the introspection endpoint is for.

Type:

curl -s -X POST https://authelia.example.org/api/oidc/introspection
     -u "test-client:${YOUR_RANDOM_CLIENT_SECRET}"
     -d "token=${ACCESS_TOKEN}" | jq .

a valid token should return something similar to:

{
  "active": true,
  "client_id": "test-client",
  "exp": 1786554376,
  "iat": 1786550776,
  "scope": "test-scope"
}

The part we care about here is:

"active": true

That confirms that Authelia recognises the token and considers it valid.

The response also includes the client ID, scope and expiry timestamp.

Once the token expires, introspecting the same token should return it as inactive.

That’s it
-Evaggelos

I like running a few services either on my private homelab or on various cloud VPS. I prefer self-hosted applications and my security/privacy setup is to have a different username/email with a different password for each one of them. With password managers like vaultwarden/Bitwarden this is easier. What I would like to do next is to restrict access and protect my cloud applications behind a single login page and add 2FA to them. That’s what Authelia does.

In this article I will walk you through on how to setup authelia, and to make it concrete, we will protect Beszel, which is a lightweight server-monitoring dashboard that tracks CPU, RAM, disk, and network usage of your machines. It’s a great first useful, simple, and easy to tell at a glance whether the login wall is working.

Prerequisites

• Authelia — the login page that decides who gets in
  • Authelia MUST be served via the https scheme. This is not optional even for testing!
  • Authelia is a companion of reverse proxies like Traefik (good news)
• Traefik — your existing reverse proxy, which it will tell to ask Authelia’s permission before letting anyone through your application
• Your existing LDAP server — the directory of usernames and passwords Authelia will check against
  • I user openldap already, so it’s useful to use an existing database.
• Beszel — the example app we’ll put behind the login page
• a new DNS name for authelia, like authelia.example.org

Authelia Architecture

Directory layout

Here is the folder layout (under traefik directory):

./authelia/
├── authelia.env
├── docker-compose.yaml
├── config/
│   └── configuration.yml
└── secrets/
    ├── JWT_SECRET
    ├── LDAP_PASSWORD
    ├── SESSION_SECRET
    └── STORAGE_ENCRYPTION_KEY

Step 1 — Create the folders

Authelia needs two folders: one for its configuration file, and one for its secret keys. Actually the secret directory is a choice for storing the authelia secrets that we will create at the next step.

mkdir -p ./authelia/config
mkdir -p ./authelia/secrets

Step 2 — Generate the secret keys

Authelia relies on a few long, random strings to keep things secure: one to sign password-reset links, one to encrypt your login session, and one to encrypt its small local database. Rather than pasting these into a config file in plain sight, we’ll save each one into its own private file.

copy/paste the below commands in your terminal to generate all secrets:

openssl rand -hex 32 | tr -d 'n' > ./authelia/secrets/JWT_SECRET
openssl rand -hex 32 | tr -d 'n' > ./authelia/secrets/SESSION_SECRET
openssl rand -hex 32 | tr -d 'n' > ./authelia/secrets/STORAGE_ENCRYPTION_KEY

Now add your LDAP bind password:

echo -n "YOUR_LDAP_BIND_PASSWORD" > ./authelia/secrets/LDAP_PASSWORD

Finally, update permissions to these files so only your user can read them:

chmod 600 ./authelia/secrets/*

What each file is for:

Do not commit this secrets folder to git, and never share these files, to avoid anyone to impersonate your authelia.

Step 3 — Authelia configuration file

Create a new configuration file at ./authelia/config/configuration.yml.
Replacing the <...> placeholders with your own details and domain.

I use example.com for the ldap server and example.org for application domain. Which means I have multiple domains on the LDAP.

---
identity_validation:
  reset_password:

definitions:
  network:
    internal:
      - '10.10.0.0/16'
      - '172.16.0.0/12'
      - '192.168.2.0/24'
      - '100.64.0.0/10'  # tailscale network
    my_static:
      - '<my_static_ip>/32'

authentication_backend:
  ldap:
    address: 'ldaps://<ldap_ip>:636'
    implementation: 'custom'
    tls:
      server_name: 'openldap.example.com'
    base_dn: 'dc=example,dc=com'
    additional_users_dn: 'ou=People'
    # login with either username or email address
    users_filter: '(&(|({username_attribute}={input})({mail_attribute}={input}))(objectClass=person))'
    additional_groups_dn: 'ou=Groups'
    groups_filter: '(&(member={dn})(objectClass=groupOfNames))'
    user: 'cn=admin,dc=example,dc=com'
    attributes:
      username: 'uid'
      display_name: 'cn'
      mail: 'mail'

access_control:
  default_policy: 'deny'

  rules:
    - domain: 'blog.example.org' # allow blog to everybody
      policy: 'bypass'

    - domain: 'beszel.example.org' # bypass beszel for my networks
      policy: 'bypass'
      networks:
        - 'internal'
        - 'my_static'

    - domain: 'beszel.example.org' # username/password to access beszel for all other networks.
      #policy: 'one_factor'
      policy: 'two_factor'

# session cookies to authorize user access to various protected websites
session:
  name: 'authelia_session'
  cookies:
    - domain: 'example.org'
      authelia_url: 'https://authelia.example.org'
      default_redirection_url: 'https://beszel.example.org'

# storage options: sqlite, mysql & postgres
storage:
  local:
    path: '/config/db.sqlite3'

# switch to SMTP in production
notifier:
  filesystem:
    filename: '/config/notification.txt'
...

Validate authelia configuration

if you need to verify authelia configuration at any point, use:

docker compose run --rm authelia authelia config validate --config /config/configuration.yml

a typical resul should be:

# docker compose run --rm authelia
  authelia config validate --config /config/configuration.yml

Container traefik-authelia-run-ef4ec807d5b6 Creating
Container traefik-authelia-run-ef4ec807d5b6 Created
Configuration parsed and loaded successfully without errors.

Step 4 — Create the Beszel user in LDAP

the LDAP directory is the source of truth for who gets in, so we need at least one user to log in with. On your LDAP server, generate a hashed password for that user. The main idea is that the the ldap user and the beszel user have the same credentials to autologin. Eitherwise you just need to login twice :)

slappasswd -h {SSHA} -s "YOUR_BESZEL_PASSWORD"

Copy the output — it should look like {SSHA}abc123... — and create a file called beszel.ldif with this content (adjust uid, cn, mail to fit your setup):

dn: uid=beszel,ou=People,dc=example,dc=com
objectClass: inetOrgPerson
objectClass: organizationalPerson
objectClass: person
objectClass: posixAccount
objectClass: top
cn: Beszel User
givenName: Beszel
homeDirectory: /home/beszel
mail: beszel@example.org
sn: User
uid: beszel
uidNumber: 1001
gidNumber: 1001
userPassword: {SSHA}<hashed_password>

Now add it to your directory. Run this on your LDAP server (or from any machine that can reach it and has the ldap-utils tools installed):

ldapadd -x -D "cn=admin,dc=example,dc=com" -W -f beszel.ldif

You’ll be prompted for the LDAP admin password, then the user is created. That’s the account you’ll type into Authelia’s login page in Step 8.

the above ldap diff is an example, adapt it accordinly to your needs and setup.

Step 5 — Add Authelia to your docker-compose.yml

Create ./authelia/docker-compose.yaml with this content:

---
services:
  authelia:
    image: authelia/authelia:4.39.20
    container_name: authelia
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - ./config:/config
    healthcheck:
      disable: false
    secrets:
      - AUTHELIA_JWT_SECRET
      - AUTHELIA_LDAP_PASSWORD
      - AUTHELIA_SESSION_SECRET
      - AUTHELIA_STORAGE_ENCRYPTION_KEY
    env_file:
      - ./authelia.env

secrets:
  AUTHELIA_JWT_SECRET:
    file: ./secrets/JWT_SECRET
  AUTHELIA_LDAP_PASSWORD:
    file: ./secrets/LDAP_PASSWORD
  AUTHELIA_SESSION_SECRET:
    file: ./secrets/SESSION_SECRET
  AUTHELIA_STORAGE_ENCRYPTION_KEY:
    file: ./secrets/STORAGE_ENCRYPTION_KEY

Then create ./authelia/authelia.env (change the timezone to yours). Change the log level to debug if also needed:

AUTHELIA_LOG_LEVEL=info

TZ=Europe/Athens

AUTHELIA_AUTHENTICATION_BACKEND_LDAP_PASSWORD_FILE=/run/secrets/AUTHELIA_LDAP_PASSWORD
AUTHELIA_SESSION_SECRET_FILE=/run/secrets/AUTHELIA_SESSION_SECRET
AUTHELIA_STORAGE_ENCRYPTION_KEY_FILE=/run/secrets/AUTHELIA_STORAGE_ENCRYPTION_KEY
AUTHELIA_IDENTITY_VALIDATION_RESET_PASSWORD_JWT_SECRET_FILE=/run/secrets/AUTHELIA_JWT_SECRET

A few things worth knowing about this block:

• No ports: line. There is no need to expose Authelia directly to the internet — Traefik will talk to it privately, container-to-container, over the shared network.
• No custom healthcheck needed. The Authelia image already includes one built in — Docker will automatically mark the container “healthy” or “unhealthy” without you configuring anything.
• The secrets: block mounts each secret file into the container at /run/secrets/..., read-only. The env_file lines then just tell Authelia where to find each one. This keeps the actual secret values out of docker inspect output, unlike writing them straight as environment variables.

hey! do not forgot to update traefik docker-compose.yaml to include authelia docker compose yaml

include:
  # authelia.example.org: authentication and authorization server and portal
  - path: ./authelia/docker-compose.yaml

Step 6 — Tell Traefik about Authelia

I am using YAML dynamic configuration with Traefik and not labels, for me it’s more clear that way. I keep everyting under etc_traefik/dynamic/
First, we add the middleware aka the reusable “ask Authelia before letting this request through” rule. Create middlewares.yml if you have not yet a middleware yaml file.

http:
  middlewares:

    authelia:
      forwardAuth:
        # address: "http://authelia:9091/api/verify?rd=https://authelia.example.org/"
        address: "http://authelia:9091/api/authz/forward-auth"
        trustForwardHeader: true
        maxResponseBodySize: 8192
        authResponseHeaders:
          - Remote-User
          - Remote-Groups
          - Remote-Name
          - Remote-Email

Then, we create the router — so the login page itself is reachable at https://authelia.example.org and also auto create the TLS certifcate with letsencrypt.

authelia.yml:

http:
  routers:
    authelia:
      rule: 'Host(`authelia.example.org`)'
      entryPoints: ["websecure"]
      service: "authelia"
      tls:
        certResolver: letsencrypt

    authelia-http:
      rule: 'Host(`authelia.example.org`)'
      entryPoints:
        - web
      service: "authelia"
      middlewares:
        - redirect-to-https

  services:
    authelia:
      loadBalancer:
        servers:
          - url: "http://authelia:9091"

Notes:

• certResolver: letsencrypt — use whatever you named your certificate resolver in Traefik’s main config (the one that gets you your Let’s Encrypt certificates). If yours has a different name, change it here.
• authelia-http just catches plain http:// requests and redirects them to https:// — this assumes you already have a redirect-to-https middleware defined in your Traefik dynamic config, which is a standard pattern.
• Make sure both authelia.example.org and beszel.example.org already have DNS records (an A record) pointing at your server, same as your other subdomains.

Step 7 — Put Beszel behind the login page

Now for the authelia part to beszel. Update beszel.yml in the same Traefik dynamic config folder. If Beszel already has a router file, it should look this:

http:
  routers:
    beszel:
      rule: 'Host(`beszel.example.org`)'
      entryPoints: ["websecure"]
      service: "beszel"
      tls:
        certResolver: letsencrypt
      middlewares:
        - authelia@file     # <-- this line is the only change

    beszel-http:
      rule: 'Host(`beszel.example.org`)'
      entryPoints:
        - web
      service: "beszel"
      middlewares:
        - redirect-to-https

  services:
    beszel:
      loadBalancer:
        servers:
          - url: "http://beszel:8090"

The whole magic is: - authelia@file in the middleware list. (The @file suffix just tells Traefik the middleware is defined in a dynamic file.

Any router you add that line to is now protected: visitors get redirected to the Authelia login page first.

TRUSTED_AUTH_HEADER

Do not forget to add TRUSTED_AUTH_HEADER to your beszel docker compose yaml file, to allow autologin!

beszel-docker-compose.yml

environment:
  USER_CREATION: false
  TRUSTED_AUTH_HEADER: "Remote-Email"

With this, it will

Step 8 — Start authelia.

From the ./authelia folder:

docker compose up -d authelia
docker compose logs -f authelia

Traefik is already watching its dynamic config folder, so it will pick up the new files automatically — no restart needed.

Monitor docker compose logs in the console.

Open https://authelia.example.org in your browser. You should see Authelia’s login page.

Then open https://beszel.example.org on a new tab.

• From home (on your local network, or from your fixed home IP): you should land straight on Beszel — no authelia login, thanks to the bypass rule for trusted networks.
• From anywhere else (try your phone on mobile data or brave via tor): you’ll be redirected to the authelia login page. Log in with the beszel user or email and the password you set in ldap, and you should autologin on Beszel, now authenticated. Magic !
• The public blog (blog.example.org) stays open to everyone — check it still loads without a login.

That’s it !
Evaggelos