Configure GitLab OAuth2 authentication

To enable GitLab OAuth2 you must register the application in GitLab. GitLab will generate a client ID and secret key for you to use.

Create GitLab OAuth keys

You need to create a GitLab OAuth application. Choose a descriptive Name, and use the following Redirect URI:

  1. https://grafana.example.com/login/gitlab

where https://grafana.example.com is the URL you use to connect to Grafana. Adjust it as needed if you don’t use HTTPS or if you use a different port; for instance, if you access Grafana at http://203.0.113.31:3000, you should use

  1. http://203.0.113.31:3000/login/gitlab

Finally, select read_api_as the_Scope_and submit the form. Note that if you’re not going to use GitLab groups for authorization (i.e. not setting allowed_groups, see below), you can select_read_user instead of read_api_as the_Scope, thus giving a more restricted access to your GitLab API.

You’ll get an Application Id and a Secret in return; we’ll call them GITLAB_APPLICATION_ID and GITLAB_SECRET respectively for the rest of this section.

Enable GitLab in Grafana

Add the following to your Grafana configuration file to enable GitLab authentication:

  1. [auth.gitlab]
  2. enabled = true
  3. allow_sign_up = false
  4. client_id = GITLAB_APPLICATION_ID
  5. client_secret = GITLAB_SECRET
  6. scopes = read_api
  7. auth_url = https://gitlab.com/oauth/authorize
  8. token_url = https://gitlab.com/oauth/token
  9. api_url = https://gitlab.com/api/v4
  10. allowed_groups =

You may have to set the root_url option of [server] for the callback URL to be correct. For example in case you are serving Grafana behind a proxy.

Restart the Grafana backend for your changes to take effect.

If you use your own instance of GitLab instead of gitlab.com, adjust auth_url, token_url and api_url accordingly by replacing the gitlab.com hostname with your own.

With allow_sign_up set to false, only existing users will be able to login using their GitLab account, but with allow_sign_up set to true, any user who can authenticate on GitLab will be able to login on your Grafana instance; if you use the public gitlab.com, it means anyone in the world would be able to login on your Grafana instance.

You can limit access to only members of a given group or list of groups by setting the allowed_groups option.

allowed_groups

To limit access to authenticated users that are members of one or more GitLab groups, set allowed_groups to a comma- or space-separated list of groups. For instance, if you want to only give access to members of the example group, set

  1. allowed_groups = example

If you want to also give access to members of the subgroup bar, which is in the group foo, set

  1. allowed_groups = example, foo/bar

Note that in GitLab, the group or subgroup name doesn’t always match its display name, especially if the display name contains spaces or special characters. Make sure you always use the group or subgroup name as it appears in the URL of the group or subgroup.

Here’s a complete example with allow_sign_up enabled, with access limited to the example and foo/bar groups. The example also promotes all GitLab Admins to Grafana Admins:

  1. [auth.gitlab]
  2. enabled = true
  3. allow_sign_up = true
  4. client_id = GITLAB_APPLICATION_ID
  5. client_secret = GITLAB_SECRET
  6. scopes = read_api
  7. auth_url = https://gitlab.com/oauth/authorize
  8. token_url = https://gitlab.com/oauth/token
  9. api_url = https://gitlab.com/api/v4
  10. allowed_groups = example, foo/bar
  11. role_attribute_path = is_admin && 'Admin' || 'Viewer'

Map roles

You can use GitLab OAuth to map roles. During mapping, Grafana checks for the presence of a role using the JMESPath specified via the role_attribute_path configuration option.

For the path lookup, Grafana uses JSON obtained from querying GitLab’s API /api/v4/user endpoint and a groups key containing all of the user’s teams. The result of evaluating the role_attribute_path JMESPath expression must be a valid Grafana role, for example, Viewer, Editor or Admin. For more information about roles and permissions in Grafana, refer to Roles and permissions.

An example Query could look like the following:

  1. role_attribute_path = is_admin && 'Admin' || 'Viewer'

This allows every GitLab Admin to be an Admin in Grafana.

Map roles using groups

Groups can also be used to map roles. Group name (lowercased and unique) is used instead of display name for identifying groups

For instance, if you have a group with display name ‘Example-Group’ you can use the following snippet to ensure those members inherit the role ‘Editor’.

  1. role_attribute_path = contains(groups[*], 'example-group') && 'Editor' || 'Viewer'

Note: If a match is found in other fields, groups will be ignored.

Team Sync (Enterprise only)

Only available in Grafana Enterprise v6.4+

With Team Sync you can map your GitLab groups to teams in Grafana so that your users will automatically be added to the correct teams.

Your GitLab groups can be referenced in the same way as allowed_groups, like example or foo/bar.

Learn more about Team Sync