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Configure GitLab OAuth2 authentication

To enable GitLab OAuth2 you must register the application in GitLab. GitLab will generate a client ID and secret key for you to use.

Create GitLab OAuth keys

You need to create a GitLab OAuth application. Choose a descriptive Name, and use the following Redirect URI:

https://grafana.example.com/login/gitlab

where https://grafana.example.com is the URL you use to connect to Grafana. Adjust it as needed if you don’t use HTTPS or if you use a different port; for instance, if you access Grafana at http://203.0.113.31:3000, you should use

http://203.0.113.31:3000/login/gitlab

Finally, select read_api_as the_Scope_and submit the form. Note that if you’re not going to use GitLab groups for authorization (i.e. not setting allowed_groups, see below), you can select_read_user instead of read_api_as the_Scope, thus giving a more restricted access to your GitLab API.

You’ll get an Application Id and a Secret in return; we’ll call them GITLAB_APPLICATION_ID and GITLAB_SECRET respectively for the rest of this section.

Enable GitLab in Grafana

Add the following to your Grafana configuration file to enable GitLab authentication:

bash 
[auth.gitlab]
enabled = true
allow_sign_up = false
client_id = GITLAB_APPLICATION_ID
client_secret = GITLAB_SECRET
scopes = read_api
auth_url = https://gitlab.com/oauth/authorize
token_url = https://gitlab.com/oauth/token
api_url = https://gitlab.com/api/v4
allowed_groups =
role_attribute_path =
role_attribute_strict = false
allow_assign_grafana_admin = false

You may have to set the root_url option of [server] for the callback URL to be correct. For example in case you are serving Grafana behind a proxy.

Restart the Grafana backend for your changes to take effect.

If you use your own instance of GitLab instead of gitlab.com, adjust auth_url, token_url and api_url accordingly by replacing the gitlab.com hostname with your own.

With allow_sign_up set to false, only existing users will be able to login using their GitLab account, but with allow_sign_up set to true, any user who can authenticate on GitLab will be able to login on your Grafana instance; if you use the public gitlab.com, it means anyone in the world would be able to login on your Grafana instance.

You can limit access to only members of a given group or list of groups by setting the allowed_groups option.

allowed_groups

To limit access to authenticated users that are members of one or more GitLab groups, set allowed_groups to a comma- or space-separated list of groups. For instance, if you want to only give access to members of the example group, set

ini 
allowed_groups = example

If you want to also give access to members of the subgroup bar, which is in the group foo, set

ini 
allowed_groups = example, foo/bar

Note that in GitLab, the group or subgroup name doesn’t always match its display name, especially if the display name contains spaces or special characters. Make sure you always use the group or subgroup name as it appears in the URL of the group or subgroup.

Here’s a complete example with allow_sign_up enabled, with access limited to the example and foo/bar groups. The example also promotes all GitLab Admins to Grafana organization admins:

ini 
[auth.gitlab]
enabled = true
allow_sign_up = true
client_id = GITLAB_APPLICATION_ID
client_secret = GITLAB_SECRET
scopes = read_api
auth_url = https://gitlab.com/oauth/authorize
token_url = https://gitlab.com/oauth/token
api_url = https://gitlab.com/api/v4
allowed_groups = example, foo/bar
role_attribute_path = is_admin && 'Admin' || 'Viewer'
role_attribute_strict = true
allow_assign_grafana_admin = false

Map roles

You can use GitLab OAuth to map roles. During mapping, Grafana checks for the presence of a role using the JMESPath specified via the role_attribute_path configuration option.

For the path lookup, Grafana uses JSON obtained from querying GitLab’s API /api/v4/user endpoint and a groups key containing all of the user’s teams. The result of evaluating the role_attribute_path JMESPath expression must be a valid Grafana role, for example, Viewer, Editor or Admin. For more information about roles and permissions in Grafana, refer to Roles and permissions.

Warning: Currently if no organization role mapping is found for a user, Grafana doesn’t update the user’s organization role. This is going to change in Grafana 10. To avoid overriding manually set roles, enable the oauth_skip_org_role_update_sync option. See configure-grafana for more information.

On first login, if therole_attribute_path property does not return a role, then the user is assigned the role specified by the auto_assign_org_role option. You can disable this default role assignment by setting role_attribute_strict = true. It denies user access if no role or an invalid role is returned.

Warning: With Grafana 10, on every login, if therole_attribute_path property does not return a role, then the user is assigned the role specified by the auto_assign_org_role option.

An example Query could look like the following:

ini 
role_attribute_path = is_admin && 'Admin' || 'Viewer'

This allows every GitLab Admin to be an Admin in Grafana.

Map roles using groups

Groups can also be used to map roles. Group name (lowercased and unique) is used instead of display name for identifying groups

For instance, if you have a group with display name ‘Example-Group’ you can use the following snippet to ensure those members inherit the role ‘Editor’.

ini 
role_attribute_path = contains(groups[*], 'example-group') && 'Editor' || 'Viewer'

Note: If a match is found in other fields, groups will be ignored.

Map server administrator privileges

Available in Grafana v9.2 and later versions.

If the application role received by Grafana is GrafanaAdmin, Grafana grants the user server administrator privileges.
This is useful if you want to grant server administrator privileges to a subset of users.
Grafana also assigns the user the Admin role of the default organization.

The setting allow_assign_grafana_admin under [auth.gitlab] must be set to true for this to work.
If the setting is set to false, the user is assigned the role of Admin of the default organization, but not server administrator privileges.

ini 
allow_assign_grafana_admin = true

Example:

ini 
role_attribute_path = is_admin && 'GrafanaAdmin' || 'Viewer'

Team Sync (Enterprise only)

Only available in Grafana Enterprise v6.4+

With Team Sync you can map your GitLab groups to teams in Grafana so that your users will automatically be added to the correct teams.

Your GitLab groups can be referenced in the same way as allowed_groups, like example or foo/bar.

Learn more about Team Sync