Chapter 3. Managing Users

This topic describes the management of user accounts, including how new user accounts are created in OpenShift Container Platform and how they can be deleted.

After new users log in to OpenShift Container Platform, an account is created for that user per the identity provider configured on the master. The cluster administrator can manage the access level of each user.

OpenShift Container Platform user configuration is stored in several locations within OpenShift Container Platform. Regardless of the identity provider, OpenShift Container Platform internally stores details like role-based access control (RBAC) information and group membership. To completely remove user information, this data must be removed in addition to the user account.

In OpenShift Container Platform, two object types contain user data outside the identification provider: user and identity.

To get the current list of users:

$ oc get user
NAME      UID                                    FULL NAME   IDENTITIES
demo     75e4b80c-dbf1-11e5-8dc6-0e81e52cc949               htpasswd_auth:demo

To get the current list of identities:

$ oc get identity
NAME                  IDP NAME        IDP USER NAME   USER NAME   USER UID
htpasswd_auth:demo    htpasswd_auth   demo            demo        75e4b80c-dbf1-11e5-8dc6-0e81e52cc949

Note the matching UID between the two object types. If you attempt to change the authentication provider after starting to use OpenShift Container Platform, the user names that overlap will not work because of the entries in the identity list, which will still point to the old authentication method.

To add a label to a user or group:

$ oc label user/<user_name> <label_name>

For example, if the user name is theuser and the label is level=gold:

$ oc label user/theuser level=gold

To remove the label:

$ oc label user/<user_name> <label_name>-

To show labels for a user or group:

$ oc describe user/<user_name>

To delete a user:

After you complete these steps, a new account will be created in OpenShift Container Platform when the user logs in again.

If your intention is to prevent the user from being able to log in again (for example, if an employee has left the company and you want to permanently delete the account), you can also remove the user from your authentication back end (like htpasswd, kerberos, or others) for the configured identity provider.

For example, if you are using htpasswd, delete the entry in the htpasswd file that is configured for OpenShift Container Platform with the user name and password.

For external identification management like Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) or Red Hat Identity Management (IdM), use the user management tools to remove the user entry.