Chapter 10. Understanding and creating service accounts 10.1. Service accounts overview A service account is an OpenShift Container Platform account that allows a component to directly access the API. Service accounts are API objects that exist within each project. Service accounts provide a flexible way to control API access without sharing a regular user's credentials. When you use the OpenShift Container Platform CLI or web console, your API token authenticates you to the API. You can associate a component with a service account so that they can access the API without using a regular user's credentials. For example, service accounts can allow: Replication controllers to make API calls to create or delete pods Applications inside containers to make API calls for discovery purposes External applications to make API calls for monitoring or integration purposes Each service account's user name is derived from its project and name: system:serviceaccount:<project>:<name> Every service account is also a member of two groups: Group Description system:serviceaccounts Includes all service accounts in the system. system:serviceaccounts:<project> Includes all service accounts in the specified project. 10.1.1. Automatically generated image pull secrets By default, OpenShift Container Platform creates an image pull secret for each service account. Note Prior to OpenShift Container Platform 4.16, a long-lived service account API token secret was also generated for each service account that was created. Starting with OpenShift Container Platform 4.16, this service account API token secret is no longer created. After upgrading to 4.16, any existing long-lived service account API token secrets are not deleted and will continue to function. For information about detecting long-lived API tokens that are in use in your cluster or deleting them if they are not needed, see the Red Hat Knowledgebase article Long-lived service account API tokens in OpenShift Container Platform . This image pull secret is necessary to integrate the OpenShift image registry into the cluster's user authentication and authorization system. However, if you do not enable the ImageRegistry capability or if you disable the integrated OpenShift image registry in the Cluster Image Registry Operator's configuration, an image pull secret is not generated for each service account. When the integrated OpenShift image registry is disabled on a cluster that previously had it enabled, the previously generated image pull secrets are deleted automatically. 10.2. Creating service accounts You can create a service account in a project and grant it permissions by binding it to a role. Procedure Optional: To view the service accounts in the current project: USD oc get sa Example output NAME SECRETS AGE builder 1 2d default 1 2d deployer 1 2d To create a new service account in the current project: USD oc create sa <service_account_name> 1 1 To create a service account in a different project, specify -n <project_name> . Example output serviceaccount "robot" created Tip You can alternatively apply the following YAML to create the service account: apiVersion: v1 kind: ServiceAccount metadata: name: <service_account_name> namespace: <current_project> Optional: View the secrets for the service account: USD oc describe sa robot Example output Name: robot Namespace: project1 Labels: <none> Annotations: openshift.io/internal-registry-pull-secret-ref: robot-dockercfg-qzbhb Image pull secrets: robot-dockercfg-qzbhb Mountable secrets: robot-dockercfg-qzbhb Tokens: <none> Events: <none> 10.3. Granting roles to service accounts You can grant roles to service accounts in the same way that you grant roles to a regular user account. You can modify the service accounts for the current project. For example, to add the view role to the robot service account in the top-secret project: USD oc policy add-role-to-user view system:serviceaccount:top-secret:robot Tip You can alternatively apply the following YAML to add the role: apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1 kind: RoleBinding metadata: name: view namespace: top-secret roleRef: apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io kind: ClusterRole name: view subjects: - kind: ServiceAccount name: robot namespace: top-secret You can also grant access to a specific service account in a project. For example, from the project to which the service account belongs, use the -z flag and specify the <service_account_name> USD oc policy add-role-to-user <role_name> -z <service_account_name> Important If you want to grant access to a specific service account in a project, use the -z flag. Using this flag helps prevent typos and ensures that access is granted to only the specified service account. Tip You can alternatively apply the following YAML to add the role: apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1 kind: RoleBinding metadata: name: <rolebinding_name> namespace: <current_project_name> roleRef: apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io kind: ClusterRole name: <role_name> subjects: - kind: ServiceAccount name: <service_account_name> namespace: <current_project_name> To modify a different namespace, you can use the -n option to indicate the project namespace it applies to, as shown in the following examples. For example, to allow all service accounts in all projects to view resources in the my-project project: USD oc policy add-role-to-group view system:serviceaccounts -n my-project Tip You can alternatively apply the following YAML to add the role: apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1 kind: RoleBinding metadata: name: view namespace: my-project roleRef: apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io kind: ClusterRole name: view subjects: - apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io kind: Group name: system:serviceaccounts To allow all service accounts in the managers project to edit resources in the my-project project: USD oc policy add-role-to-group edit system:serviceaccounts:managers -n my-project Tip You can alternatively apply the following YAML to add the role: apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1 kind: RoleBinding metadata: name: edit namespace: my-project roleRef: apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io kind: ClusterRole name: edit subjects: - apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io kind: Group name: system:serviceaccounts:managers

Commands:
system:serviceaccount:<project>:<name>
oc get sa
NAME SECRETS AGE builder 1 2d default 1 2d deployer 1 2d
oc create sa <service_account_name> 1
serviceaccount "robot" created
apiVersion: v1 kind: ServiceAccount metadata: name: <service_account_name> namespace: <current_project>
oc describe sa robot
Name: robot Namespace: project1 Labels: <none> Annotations: openshift.io/internal-registry-pull-secret-ref: robot-dockercfg-qzbhb Image pull secrets: robot-dockercfg-qzbhb Mountable secrets: robot-dockercfg-qzbhb Tokens: <none> Events: <none>
oc policy add-role-to-user view system:serviceaccount:top-secret:robot
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1 kind: RoleBinding metadata: name: view namespace: top-secret roleRef: apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io kind: ClusterRole name: view subjects: - kind: ServiceAccount name: robot namespace: top-secret
oc policy add-role-to-user <role_name> -z <service_account_name>
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1 kind: RoleBinding metadata: name: <rolebinding_name> namespace: <current_project_name> roleRef: apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io kind: ClusterRole name: <role_name> subjects: - kind: ServiceAccount name: <service_account_name> namespace: <current_project_name>
oc policy add-role-to-group view system:serviceaccounts -n my-project
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1 kind: RoleBinding metadata: name: view namespace: my-project roleRef: apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io kind: ClusterRole name: view subjects: - apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io kind: Group name: system:serviceaccounts
oc policy add-role-to-group edit system:serviceaccounts:managers -n my-project
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1 kind: RoleBinding metadata: name: edit namespace: my-project roleRef: apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io kind: ClusterRole name: edit subjects: - apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io kind: Group name: system:serviceaccounts:managers