gnmi: standardise metadata username/password keys #183
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Currently, there is no standard for what keys should be used in the metadata to identify gNMI/gNOI username and password when doing authentication. By convention, the username and password are provided in the metadata with keys "username" and "password". (see examples below). It would be good to formalise this into the gNMI authentication reference spec here so that gNMI clients and servers can both be designed with this consensus. Some examples of current gNMI clients providing "username" and "password" as keys in metadata: 1. gnmi_cli client: https://github.com/openconfig/gnmi/blob/d5360e33fc3b22effeaaaf55f345c1f950765bed/client/gnmi/credentials.go#L35 2. goarista client: https://github.com/aristanetworks/goarista/blob/6112fea8c7e028c64ae52412952b0a2142b8c2e9/gnmi/client.go#L311 3. gnmic client: https://github.com/karimra/gnmic/blob/d1b198f67a99fe2f228d6119569310ebb1a50be3/target/target.go#L140 Note the other usages of metadata.AppendToOutgoingContext(ctx, "username", *t.Config.Username) and metadata.AppendToOutgoingContext(ctx, "password", *t.Config.Password) 4. pygnmi client https://github.com/akarneliuk/pygnmi/blob/3090d23ae32658026a244390a296f6ade01e9fb3/pygnmi/client.py#L54
hellt
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Mar 20, 2023
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| #### Metadata standards | ||
| <ul> | ||
| gRPC specifies <a href="https://grpc.io/docs/what-is-grpc/core-concepts/#metadata">metadata</a> as a list of arbitrary key/value pairs.<br> | ||
| The following metadata key/value pairs are therefore standardised across gNMI/gNOI for cases where metadata is involved in authentication: | ||
|
|
||
| | Key | Value | | ||
| |--------------|-----------------| | ||
| | `"username"` | client username | | ||
| | `"password"` | client password | | ||
| </ul> |
Contributor
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NIT: there seems to be no need in using HTML inside this markdown
ul and br can be omitted
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They're just being used to indent the table and text to be aligned with the other lists above
for example:
heading
-
some text
| Key | Value |
|---|---|
"username" |
client username |
"password" |
client password |
vs
heading
some text
| Key | Value |
|---|---|
"username" |
client username |
"password" |
client password |
I think the first one looks a bit nicer so I'm inclined to keep it, but I can remove this if you want - let me know
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Currently, there is no standard for what keys should be used in the metadata to identify gNMI/gNOI username and password when doing authentication.
By convention, the username and password are provided in the metadata with keys "username" and "password".
(see examples below).
It would be good to formalise this into the gNMI authentication reference spec here so that gNMI clients and servers can both be designed with this consensus.
Some examples of current gNMI clients providing "username" and "password" as keys in metadata:
gnmi_cli client: https://github.com/openconfig/gnmi/blob/d5360e33fc3b22effeaaaf55f345c1f950765bed/client/gnmi/credentials.go#L35
goarista client: https://github.com/aristanetworks/goarista/blob/6112fea8c7e028c64ae52412952b0a2142b8c2e9/gnmi/client.go#L311
gnmic client: https://github.com/karimra/gnmic/blob/d1b198f67a99fe2f228d6119569310ebb1a50be3/target/target.go#L140
Also note the other usages of
metadata.AppendToOutgoingContext(ctx, "username", *t.Config.Username)andmetadata.AppendToOutgoingContext(ctx, "password", *t.Config.Password)pygnmi client https://github.com/akarneliuk/pygnmi/blob/3090d23ae32658026a244390a296f6ade01e9fb3/pygnmi/client.py#L54