Managing Tickets

Introduces authentication using tickets for users and MapR servers.

MapR implements authentication with tickets. Tickets contain keys, and are used to authenticate users and MapR servers. In addition, certificates are used to implement server authentication. Every user who wants to access a cluster must have a MapR user ticket (maprticket_<uid>) and every node in the cluster must have a MapR server ticket (maprserverticket).

A ticket is an object that contains specific information about a user and a key. A ticket authenticates a user to the cluster. Tickets are encrypted to protect their contents. MapR supports the following types of tickets for authentication:

  • MapR user tickets
  • MapR service tickets
  • MapR tenant tickets
  • Kerberos tickets

The following table describes the type of tickets supported by MapR for users and services and whether the ticket can be used to impersonate another user. Only the cluster administrator can generate all these tickets, except the user ticket, using the maprlogin utility; any valid user can generate the user ticket using the maprlogin utility. You can place these type of tickets on both cluster and client nodes. These tickets support (FUSE-based and loopbacknfs) POSIX clients and HDFS APIs.

Ticket Type Description Impersonation support Notes
user For granting access to individual users. This type of ticket has a short duration. N/A* The UID of the ticket (implicit or explicit value of the -user parameter to maprlogin command) is used as the identity of the entity using this ticket, except for the exceptions noted here for user root and user mapr.
service For accessing services running on client nodes. This type of ticket can have long duration. N/A* The UID of the ticket (explicit value of the -user parameter to maprlogin command) is used as the identity of the entity using this ticket, except for the exceptions noted here for user root and user mapr.
servicewithimpersonation (not scoped) For accessing services running on client nodes to run jobs on behalf of any user (except user mapr). This type of ticket can have long duration. Yes The ticket cannot be used to impersonate user root or user mapr.
servicewithimpersonation (scoped) For accessing services running on client nodes to run jobs on behalf of the users (except user root and user mapr) specified in the ticket. This type of ticket can have long duration. Yes At ticket generation time, you cannot specify UID/GID of user root or user mapr to impersonate user root or user mapr respectively.
NOTE: On MapR v6.0.1, scoped impersonation works with FUSE-based POSIX clients; scoped impersonation cannot be used with NFS and loopbacknfs POSIX clients. To use scoped impersonation on MapR v6.0.1, download and install the 6.0.1 EBF patch for RPM- or DEB-based distributions.
* Exceptions:
  • User mapr can impersonate other users (including user root)
  • User root can impersonate other users (excluding user mapr)
IMPORTANT: The identity of the user that authenticates with the maprlogin utility is independent from the identity of the user of the client OS.

MapR tickets contain the following information:

  • UID (generated from the UNIX user ID)
  • GIDs (group IDs for each group the user belongs to)
  • ticket creation time
  • ticket expiration time (initial duration of the ticket)
  • renewal expiration time (maximum lifetime of the ticket)
  • Whether user can (true) or cannot (false) impersonate another user

Since a ticket contains the GIDs for a user at the time the ticket is generated, a user must re-generate their ticket after changing group memberships.

Syntax and Examples of Creating and Managing User Tickets

For complete syntax, see The maprlogin Utility. For examples of creating and managing user tickets, see maprlogin Command Examples.