GitHub auth with a personal GitHub account?

Vault
1

Had a question about GitHub auth and haven’t found much after searching the docs/forum.
This is just a curiosity thing, not urgent.

So after following the guide I’ve configured GitHub auth + set an org name, and been able to use a GitHub access token to login fine, which is great.

I see a section of the docs seem to suggest the org is required.

Are orgs truly a necessary thing here?
I’m curious if it might be possible to use my own personal account, not a GitHub org.
My Vault instance is just for learning, and while I know I can setup a free GitHub org, I’d just rather not involve orgs if at all possible.

Might there be e.g. some kind of “proxy” or “stub” config I could use in place of a real GitHub org name?

I tried entering my personal GitHub username as the org name but I got:

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I also thought I might try ‘github’ as the org name, so individual users might be part of that ‘org’, but then I saw http://github.com/github already exists as an org, so that seems probably out.

Totally not a big deal, am a bit ignorant of this aspect of the GitHub API and maybe there are sound reasons this is not a thing. Am nevertheless curious if there might be a way :slight_smile:

2

The Github authentication method makes the organization a mandatory part of the configuration. On a login attempt, Vault will attempt to make sure the user belongs to the configured organization. There is no value for the organization string that bypasses this check.

The mandatory use of an organization helps against mistakes in user names. An organization is also necessary to set policies associated with a team (since without an organization there are no teams listed.) It also means that a user’s access is revoked when they are removed from the Github organization, without requiring a change in a Vault policy that lists the user by name.

1 Like
3

Thanks for clarifying Mark. Makes sense - ostensibly Vault’s target audience leans more towards orgs and less towards indies like me testing things out and learning.

Seems like I’ll be setting up an org then. Thanks for the detailed answer!