Service tokens

StackState Self-hosted

Overview

Using Service tokens it's possible to authenticate to StackState without having configured a user account. This is useful for situations where you want to use StackState from headless services like a CI server. In such a scenario you typically don't want to provision a user account in your identity provider.

Manage service tokens

Service tokens can be managed via the new sts CLI. The following commands are available:

> sts service-token --help
Manage service tokens.

Usage:
  sts service-token [command]

Available Commands:
  create      Create a service token
  delete      Delete a service token
  list        List service tokens

Use "sts service-token [command] --help" for more information about a command.

It's also possible to set up a bootstrap service token when installing StackState.

Create service tokens

To create a service token for an installed instance of StackState, you can use the new sts CLI.

sts service-token create

Note that the service token will only be displayed once. It isn't possible to see the token again.

This command takes the following command line arguments:

Flag	Description
--name	The name of the service token
--expiration	The expiration date of the service token, the format is yyyy-MM-dd. The expiration is optional.
--roles	A comma separated list of roles to assign to the service token

For example, the command below will create a service token with the name my-service-token and the role stackstate-power-user:

> sts service-token create --name my-service-token --roles stackstate-power-user
✅ Service token created: svctok-aaaaa-bbbb-ccccc-ddddd

Set up a bootstrap service token

When installing StackState, it's possible to bootstrap it with a (temporary) service token. This allows for using the CLI without first interacting with StackState and obtaining an API token from the UI. In order to set this up, you can add the following snippet to the StackState configuration file:

To configure StackState to create a bootstrap service token on Kubernetes, The following values need to be added to the file authentication.yaml. For example

stackstate:
  authentication:
    servicetoken:
      bootstrap:
        token: <token>
        roles:
          - stackstate-power-user
        ttl: 24h

Follow the steps below to configure StackState to create a bootstrap service token:

1. In authentication.yaml - add the bootstrap token:

   • token - The token that will be created on (initial) start of StackState.

   • roles - An array of roles that will be assigned to the bootstrap token.

   • ttl - Optional. The time-to-live for the service token, expressed as a duration string.

2. Store the file authentication.yaml together with the values.yaml from the StackState installation instructions.

3. Run a Helm upgrade to apply the changes.

   helm upgrade \
     --install \
     --namespace stackstate \
     --values values.yaml \
     --values authentication.yaml \
   stackstate \
   stackstate/stackstate-k8s

Note:

• The first run of the helm upgrade command will result in pods restarting, which may cause a short interruption of availability.

• Include authentication.yaml on every helm upgrade run.

• The authentication configuration is stored as a Kubernetes secret.

List service tokens

The ID, name, expiration date and roles of all created service tokens can be seen using the new sts CLI. For example:

> sts service-token list
ID              | NAME             | EXPIRATION | ROLES
107484341630693 | my-service-token |            | [stackstate-power-user]

Delete service tokens

A service token can be deleted using the new sts CLI. Pass the ID of the service token as an argument. For example:

> sts service-token delete 107484341630693
✅ Service token deleted: 107484341630693

Use service tokens

Once created, a service token can be used to authenticate to StackState from a headless service. To do this you can either use the CLI or directly talk to the API.

StackState sts CLI

A service token can be used for authentication with the sts CLI. For details, see the CLI documentation:

• Which version of the sts CLI am I running?

• New sts CLI: Authentication

StackState APIs

To use a service token to talk directly to the StackState Base API or the StackState Admin API, add it to the header of the request in one of the following ways:

• In the Authorization header:

  > curl -X GET -H "Authorization: ApiKey <TOKEN>" http://localhost:8080/api/server/status

• In the X-API-Key header:

  > curl -X GET -H "X-API-Key: <TOKEN>" http://localhost:8080/api/server/status

➡️ Learn more about the StackState APIs