Teleport

Web Application Access

Available for:
OpenSource
Team
Cloud
Enterprise

Download the latest version of Teleport for your platform from our downloads page and follow the installation instructions.

Start Auth/Proxy service

Create a configuration file for a Teleport service that will be running the Auth and Proxy Services:

teleport:
  data_dir: /var/lib/teleport
auth_service:
  enabled: "yes"
proxy_service:
  enabled: "yes"
  # Set public address proxy will be reachable at.
  public_addr: teleport.example.com:3080
ssh_service:
  enabled: "no"

When running Teleport in production, you should adhere to the following best practices to avoid security incidents:

Avoid using sudo in production environments unless it's necessary.
Create new, non-root, users and use test instances for experimenting with Teleport.
Run Teleport's services as a non-root user unless required. Only the SSH Service requires root access. Note that you will need root permissions (or the CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE capability) to make Teleport listen on a port numbered < 1024 (e.g. 443).
Follow the principle of least privilege. Don't give users permissive roles when more a restrictive role will do. For example, don't assign users the built-in access,editor roles, which give them permissions to access and edit all cluster resources. Instead, define roles with the minimum required permissions for each user and configure access requests to provide temporary elevated permissions.
When you enroll Teleport resources—for example, new databases or applications—you should save the invitation token to a file. If you enter the token directly on the command line, a malicious user could view it by running the history command on a compromised system.

You should note that these practices aren't necessarily reflected in the examples used in documentation. Examples in the documentation are primarily intended for demonstration and for development environments.

Configure your Teleport instance to start automatically when the host boots up by creating a systemd service for it. The instructions depend on how you installed your Teleport instance.

On the host where you will run your Teleport instance, enable and start Teleport:

sudo systemctl enable teleport
sudo systemctl start teleport

On the host where you will run your Teleport instance, create a systemd service configuration for Teleport, enable the Teleport service, and start Teleport:

sudo teleport install systemd -o /etc/systemd/system/teleport.service
sudo systemctl enable teleport
sudo systemctl start teleport

You can check the status of your Teleport instance with systemctl status teleport and view its logs with journalctl -fu teleport.

Generate a token

A join token is required to authorize a Teleport Application Proxy service to join the cluster. Generate a short-lived join token and save it for example in /tmp/token:

Log in to your cluster with tsh so you can use tctl from your local machine.
You can also run tctl on your Auth Service host without running "tsh login"
first.
tsh login --user=myuser --proxy=teleport.example.com
tctl tokens add \    --type=app \    --app-name=grafana \    --app-uri=http://localhost:3000

TLS requirements

TLS is required to secure Teleport's Access Plane and any connected applications. When setting up Teleport, the minimum requirement is a certificate for the proxy and a wildcard certificate for its sub-domain. This is where everyone will log into Teleport.

Application Access and DNS

Teleport assigns a subdomain to each application you configure for Application Access. For example, if you enroll Grafana as a resource, Teleport assigns the resource to the grafana.teleport.example.com subdomain.

If you host the Teleport cluster on your own network, you should update your DNS configuration to account for application subdomains. You can update DNS in one of two ways:

Create a single DNS address (A) or canonical name (CNAME) record using wildcard substitution for the subdomain name. For example, create a DNS record with the name *.teleport.example.com.
Create a separate DNS address (A) or canonical name (CNAME) record for each application subdomain.

Modifying DNS ensures that the certificate authority—for example, Let's Encrypt—can issue a certificate for each subdomain and that clients can verify Teleport hosts regardless of the application they are accessing.

If you use the Teleport cloud platform, no DNS updates are needed because your Teleport cluster automatically provides the subdomains and signed TLS certificates for your applications under your tenant address.

In our example:

teleport.example.com will host the Access Plane.
*.teleport.example.com will host all of the applications e.g. grafana.teleport.example.com.

If you are running Teleport on the internet, we recommend using Let's Encrypt to receive your key and certificate automatically. For private networks or custom deployments, use your own private key and certificate.

Let's Encrypt verifies that you control the domain name of your Teleport cluster by communicating with the HTTPS server listening on port 443 of your Teleport Proxy Service.

You can configure the Teleport Proxy Service to complete the Let's Encrypt verification process when it starts up.

On the host where you will start the Teleport Auth Service and Proxy Service, run the following teleport configure command. Assign tele.example.com to the domain name of your Teleport cluster and [email protected] to an email address used for notifications (you can use any domain):

sudo teleport configure -o file \    --acme --acme-email=[email protected] \    --cluster-name=tele.example.com

Port 443 on your Teleport Proxy Service host must allow traffic from all sources.

On your Teleport host, place a valid private key and a certificate chain in /var/lib/teleport/privkey.pem and /var/lib/teleport/fullchain.pem respectively.

The leaf certificate must have a subject that corresponds to the domain of your Teleport host, e.g., *.teleport.example.com.

On the host where you will start the Teleport Auth Service and Proxy Service, run the following teleport configure command. Assign tele.example.com to the domain name of your Teleport cluster.

sudo teleport configure -o file \    --cluster-name=tele.example.com \    --public-addr=tele.example.com:443 \    --cert-file=/var/lib/teleport/fullchain.pem \    --key-file=/var/lib/teleport/privkey.pem

Create a user

A Teleport user needs their role's permission to access an application. Teleport comes with a built-in access role that grants access to all apps:

tctl --config=/path/to/teleport.yaml users add --roles=access appuser

Start the Application Service with CLI flags

Install Teleport:

Select an edition, then follow the instructions for that edition to install Teleport.

Teleport Edition

curl https://goteleport.com/static/install.sh | bash -s 14.0.1

Add the Teleport repository to your repository list:

Download Teleport's PGP public key
sudo curl https://apt.releases.teleport.dev/gpg \-o /usr/share/keyrings/teleport-archive-keyring.asc
Source variables about OS version
source /etc/os-release
Add the Teleport APT repository for cloud.
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/teleport-archive-keyring.asc] \https://apt.releases.teleport.dev/${ID?} ${VERSION_CODENAME?} stable/cloud" \| sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/teleport.list > /dev/null

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install teleport-ent-updater

Source variables about OS version
source /etc/os-release
Add the Teleport YUM repository for cloud.
First, get the OS major version from $VERSION_ID so this fetches the correct
package version.
VERSION_ID=$(echo $VERSION_ID | grep -Eo "^[0-9]+")
sudo yum-config-manager --add-repo "$(rpm --eval "https://yum.releases.teleport.dev/$ID/$VERSION_ID/Teleport/%{_arch}/stable/cloud/teleport-yum.repo")"
sudo yum install teleport-ent-updater
Tip: Add /usr/local/bin to path used by sudo (so 'sudo tctl users add' will work as per the docs)
echo "Defaults    secure_path = /sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin" > /etc/sudoers.d/secure_path

Source variables about OS version
source /etc/os-release
Add the Teleport YUM repository for cloud.
First, get the OS major version from $VERSION_ID so this fetches the correct
package version.
VERSION_ID=$(echo $VERSION_ID | grep -Eo "^[0-9]+")
Use the dnf config manager plugin to add the teleport RPM repo
sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo "$(rpm --eval "https://yum.releases.teleport.dev/$ID/$VERSION_ID/Teleport/%{_arch}/stable/cloud/teleport-yum.repo")"

Install teleport
sudo dnf install teleport-ent-updater

Tip: Add /usr/local/bin to path used by sudo (so 'sudo tctl users add' will work as per the docs)
echo "Defaults    secure_path = /sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin" > /etc/sudoers.d/secure_path

Source variables about OS version
source /etc/os-release
Add the Teleport Zypper repository for cloud.
First, get the OS major version from $VERSION_ID so this fetches the correct
package version.
VERSION_ID=$(echo $VERSION_ID | grep -Eo "^[0-9]+")
Use Zypper to add the teleport RPM repo
sudo zypper addrepo --refresh --repo $(rpm --eval "https://zypper.releases.teleport.dev/$ID/$VERSION_ID/Teleport/%{_arch}/stable/cloud/teleport-zypper.repo")

Install teleport
sudo zypper install teleport-ent-updater

OS repository channels

The following channels are available for APT, YUM, and Zypper repos. They may be used in place of stable/v14 anywhere in the Teleport documentation.

Channel name	Description
`stable/<major>`	Receives releases for the specified major release line, i.e. `v14`
`stable/cloud`	Rolling channel that receives releases compatible with current Cloud version
`stable/rolling`	Rolling channel that receives all published Teleport releases

Before installing a teleport binary with a version besides v13, read our compatibility rules to ensure that the binary is compatible with Teleport Cloud.

When running multiple teleport binaries within a cluster, the following rules apply:

Patch and minor versions are always compatible, for example, any 8.0.1 component will work with any 8.0.3 component and any 8.1.0 component will work with any 8.3.0 component.
Servers support clients that are 1 major version behind, but do not support clients that are on a newer major version. For example, an 8.x.x Proxy Service is compatible with 7.x.x resource services and 7.x.x tsh, but we don't guarantee that a 9.x.x resource service will work with an 8.x.x Proxy Service. This also means you must not attempt to upgrade from 6.x.x straight to 8.x.x. You must upgrade to 7.x.x first.
Proxy Services and resource services do not support Auth Services that are on an older major version, and will fail to connect to older Auth Services by default. This behavior can be overridden by passing --skip-version-check when starting Proxy Services and resource services.

Download Teleport's PGP public key
sudo curl https://apt.releases.teleport.dev/gpg \-o /usr/share/keyrings/teleport-archive-keyring.asc
Source variables about OS version
source /etc/os-release
Add the Teleport APT repository for v14. You'll need to update this
file for each major release of Teleport.
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/teleport-archive-keyring.asc] \https://apt.releases.teleport.dev/${ID?} ${VERSION_CODENAME?} stable/v14" \| sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/teleport.list > /dev/null

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install teleport-ent