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Elastic Docs ›Elasticsearch Guide [6.3] ›Secure a cluster ›Configuring security in Elasticsearch

Configuring a file realm

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Configuring a file realm

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You can manage and authenticate users with the built-in file internal realm. All the data about the users for the file realm is stored in two files on each node in the cluster: users and users_roles. Both files are located in ES_PATH_CONF and are read on startup.

The users and users_roles files are managed locally by the node and are not managed globally by the cluster. This means that with a typical multi-node cluster, the exact same changes need to be applied on each and every node in the cluster.

A safer approach would be to apply the change on one of the nodes and have the files distributed or copied to all other nodes in the cluster (either manually or using a configuration management system such as Puppet or Chef).

The file realm is added to the realm chain by default. You don’t need to explicitly configure a file realm.

For more information about file realms, see File-based user authentication.

  1. (Optional) Add a realm configuration of type file to elasticsearch.yml under the xpack.security.authc.realms namespace. At a minimum, you must set the realm type to file. If you are configuring multiple realms, you should also explicitly set the order attribute.

    For example, the following snippet shows a file realm configuration that sets the order to zero so the realm is checked first:

    xpack:
  security:
    authc:
      realms:
        file1:
          type: file
          order: 0
  2. Restart Elasticsearch.

  3. Add user information to the ES_PATH_CONF/users file on each node in the cluster.

    The users file stores all the users and their passwords. Each line in the file represents a single user entry consisting of the username and hashed password.

    rdeniro:$2a$10$BBJ/ILiyJ1eBTYoRKxkqbuDEdYECplvxnqQ47uiowE7yGqvCEgj9W
alpacino:$2a$10$cNwHnElYiMYZ/T3K4PvzGeJ1KbpXZp2PfoQD.gfaVdImnHOwIuBKS
jacknich:$2a$10$GYUNWyABV/Ols/.bcwxuBuuaQzV6WIauW6RdboojxcixBq3LtI3ni

    X-Pack security uses bcrypt to hash the user passwords.

    While it is possible to modify this files directly using any standard text editor, we strongly recommend using the elasticsearch-users tool to apply the required changes.

    As the administrator of the cluster, it is your responsibility to ensure the same users are defined on every node in the cluster. X-Pack security does not deliver any mechanism to guarantee this.

  4. Add role information to the ES_PATH_CONF/users_roles file on each node in the cluster.

    The users_roles file stores the roles associated with the users. For example:

    admin:rdeniro
power_user:alpacino,jacknich
user:jacknich

    Each row maps a role to a comma-separated list of all the users that are associated with that role.

    You can use the elasticsearch-users tool to update this file. You must ensure that the same changes are made on every node in the cluster.

  5. (Optional) Change how often the users and users_roles files are checked.

    By default, X-Pack security checks these files for changes every 5 seconds. You can change this default behavior by changing the resource.reload.interval.high setting in the elasticsearch.yml file (as this is a common setting in Elasticsearch, changing its value may effect other schedules in the system).

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