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Ashok Nagaraj
Ashok Nagaraj

Posted on • Edited on

Space boxing user accounts with Kiosk

What

Kiosk is a CRD based approach to isolate namespaces with:

  • wrapper over namespace called "spaces" which are isolated and resoure quota applied
  • wrapper over users (and service-accounts) called "accounts" who operate within these spaces
  • configuration templates like AccountQuota and Template to generalize and simplify the management of above
Architecture

Image description

Credit: https://github.com/loft-sh/kiosk

Who can do it

All of kiosk's setup are to be done by ClusterAdmin (or users with sufficient RBAC permissions)

  1. Check you are admin
❯ kubectl auth can-i "*" "*" --all-namespaces
kubectl auth can-i "*" namespace
kubectl auth can-i "*" clusterrole
kubectl auth can-i "*" crd
yes
yes
yes
yes
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Setting up kiosk and impersonating users
  1. Install kiosk
# Install kiosk with helm v3
❯ 
kubectl create namespace kiosk
helm install kiosk --repo https://charts.devspace.sh/ kiosk --namespace kiosk --atomic
namespace/kiosk created
NAME: kiosk
...
Learn more about using kiosk here: https://github.com/loft-sh/kiosk#getting-started

#verify
❯ kubectl get pod -n kiosk
NAME                     READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
kiosk-66dbfcf6db-5rfx2   1/1     Running   0          2m18s
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  1. Create some accounts
cat account.yaml
apiVersion: tenancy.kiosk.sh/v1alpha1
kind: Account
metadata:
  name: ambers-account
spec:
  subjects:
  - kind: User
    name: amber
    apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
---
apiVersion: tenancy.kiosk.sh/v1alpha1
kind: Account
metadata:
  name: blues-account
spec:
  subjects:
  - kind: User
    name: blue
    apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
---
❯ kubectl apply -f account.yaml
account.tenancy.kiosk.sh/ambers-account created
account.tenancy.kiosk.sh/blues-account created

# Check RBAC
❯ kubectl get account.tenancy.kiosk.sh
NAME             SPACES   CREATED AT
ambers-account   0        2022-07-03T01:16:41Z
blues-account    0        2022-07-03T01:16:41Z
❯ kubectl get accounts --as=amber
NAME             SPACES   CREATED AT
ambers-account   0        2022-07-03T01:16:41Z
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Note
In the real world, users come through external systems and are usually authenticated through systems like Dex (alternatively, if you are in a public cloud, you may be able to use provider-specific solutions such as AWS IAM for EKS or GCP IAM for GKE).
For service-accounts instead of actual users check this


Working with Spaces

Spaces are wrappers over namespaces. Users are allowed to use and operate on spaces that they are alloted to while others
are denied and invisible to them.

cat spaces.yaml
apiVersion: tenancy.kiosk.sh/v1alpha1
kind: Space
metadata:
  name: ambers-space
spec:
  # spec.account can be omitted if the current user only belongs to a single account
  account: ambers-account
---
apiVersion: tenancy.kiosk.sh/v1alpha1
kind: Space
metadata:
  name: blues-space
spec:
  # spec.account can be omitted if the current user only belongs to a single account
  account: blues-account
---
❯ k create -f spaces.yaml
space.tenancy.kiosk.sh/ambers-space created
space.tenancy.kiosk.sh/blues-space created
# Verify 
❯ k get spaces --as=amber
NAME           OWNER            CREATED AT
ambers-space   ambers-account   2022-07-03T01:22:44Z
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Create resources

❯ k create deployment test-dep-001 --image=nginx --as=amber --namespace=ambers-space
deployment.apps/test-dep-001 created
❯ k create deployment test-dep-002 --image=nginx --as=amber --namespace=blues-space
error: failed to create deployment: deployments.apps is forbidden: User "amber" cannot create resource "deployments" in API group "apps" in the namespace "blues-space"

# Verify
❯ k get deployments.apps -n ambers-space
NAME           READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
test-dep-001   0/1     1            0           28s
❯ k get deployments.apps -n blues-space
No resources found in blues-space namespace.
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Delete resources
❯ k delete space blues-space --as=blue
Error from server (Forbidden): spaces.tenancy.kiosk.sh "blues-space" is forbidden: User "blue" cannot delete resource "spaces" in API group "tenancy.kiosk.sh" at the cluster scope
❯ k delete space blues-space
space.tenancy.kiosk.sh "blues-space" deleted
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Templates

Templates in kiosk are used to initialize namespaces and apply common resources across namespaces (e.g. secrets).
When creating a Space, kiosk will use these Templates to populate the newly created Namespace for this Space.
Templates:

  • can contain one or more kubernetes manifests or a helm invocation
  • administered and managed by TemplateInstance (in the respective namespace)
  • can be parametrized for customizability

Create a manifest

Associate with an account

Instantiate the template

[Way more information on templates](https://github.com/loft-sh/kiosk#53-using-templates)

Miscellaneous
  1. Account defaults
cat account-default-space-metadata.yaml
apiVersion: tenancy.kiosk.sh/v1alpha1
kind: Account
metadata:
  name: alpha-space-default-metadata
spec:
  space:
    clusterRole: kiosk-space-admin
    spaceTemplate:
      metadata:
        labels:
          some-label: "label-value"
          other-label: "other-value"
        annotations:
          "foo": "bar"
          "department": "alpha"
  subjects:
  - kind: User
    name: adam
    apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  - kind: User
    name: brian
    apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
❯ k create -f account-default-space-metadata.yaml
account.tenancy.kiosk.sh/alpha-space-default-metadata created
❯ k describe account alpha-space-default-metadata 
...
Name: alpha-space-default-metadata
Namespace: null
Spec:
  Space:
    Cluster Role: kiosk-space-admin
    Space Template:
      Metadata:
        Annotations:
          Department: alpha
          Foo: bar
        Creation Timestamp: <nil>
        Labels:
          Other - Label: other-value
          Some - Label: label-value
  Subjects:
    API Group: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
    Kind: User
    Name: brian
Status: null
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  1. Space limit
  2. Account quotas

Bottom line

Kiosk seems very powerful with the templates concept but documentation (of that part) is not straight forward.
(May be a documentation pull-request?)

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