Try out Teleport on a Linux Server

This tutorial will show you how to install and run a demo Teleport cluster 13.0.3 on a Linux host using Teleport Community Edition. Once you deploy the cluster, you can configure RBAC, register resources, and protect your small-scale demo environments or home lab.

We will run the following Teleport services:

• Teleport Auth Service: The certificate authority for your cluster. It issues certificates and conducts authentication challenges. The Auth Service is typically inaccessible outside your private network.
• Teleport Proxy Service: The cluster frontend, which handles user requests, forwards user credentials to the Auth Service, and communicates with Teleport instances that enable access to specific resources in your infrastructure.
• Teleport SSH Service: An SSH server implementation that takes advantage of Teleport's short-lived certificates, sophisticated RBAC, session recording, and other features.

Prerequisites

• A Linux host with only port 443 open to ingress traffic. You must be able to install and run software on the host. Either configure access to the host via SSH for the initial setup (and open an SSH port in addition port 443) or enter the commands in this guide into an Amazon EC2 user data script, Google Compute Engine startup script, or similar.

  Quick demo environments

  For a quick demo environment you can use to follow this guide, consider installing our DigitalOcean 1-Click droplet. View the installation page on DigitalOcean Marketplace. Once your droplet is ready, SSH into the droplet and follow the configuration wizard.

• A two-factor authenticator app such as Authy, Google Authenticator, or Microsoft Authenticator

You must also have one of the following:

• A registered domain name.
• An authoritative DNS nameserver managed by your organization, plus an existing certificate authority. If using this approach, ensure that your browser is configured to use your organization's nameserver.

This guide is not intended for local deployments. If your environment doesn't meet the prerequisites above, you can get started with Teleport by signing up for a free trial of Teleport Enterprise Cloud.

Step 1/4. Configure DNS

Teleport uses TLS to provide secure access to its Proxy Service and Auth Service, and this requires a domain name that clients can use to verify Teleport's certificate. Set up two DNS A records, each pointing to the IP address of your Linux host. Assuming teleport.example.com is your domain name, set up records for:

Step 2/4. Set up Teleport on your Linux host

Install Teleport

On your Linux host, run the following command to install the Teleport binary:

curl https://goteleport.com/static/install.sh | bash -s 13.0.3

Configure Teleport

Generate a configuration file for Teleport using the teleport configure command. This command requires information about a TLS certificate and private key.

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.

teleport configure --acme --acme-email=[email protected] --cluster-name=tele.example.com | \sudo tee /etc/teleport.yaml > /dev/null

proxy_service:
  enabled: "yes"
  web_listen_addr: 0.0.0.0:443
  public_addr: tele.example.com:443
  acme:
    enabled: "yes"
    email: [email protected]

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

Start Teleport

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.

sudo systemctl enable teleport
sudo systemctl 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.

Access Teleport's Web UI via HTTPS at the domain you created earlier (e.g., https://teleport.example.com). You should see a welcome screen similar to the following:

Step 3/4. Create a Teleport user and set up two-factor authentication

In this step, we'll create a new Teleport user, teleport-admin, which is allowed to log into SSH hosts as any of the principals root, ubuntu, or ec2-user.

On your Linux host, run the following command:

tctl is an administrative tool that is used to configure Teleport's auth service.
sudo tctl users add teleport-admin --roles=editor,access --logins=root,ubuntu,ec2-user

The command prints a message similar to the following:

User "teleport-admin" has been created but requires a password. Share this URL with the user to complete user setup, link is valid for 1h:
https://teleport.example.com:443/web/invite/123abc456def789ghi123abc456def78

NOTE: Make sure teleport.example.com:443 points at a Teleport proxy which users can access.

Visit the provided URL in order to create your Teleport user.

Teleport enforces the use of two-factor authentication by default. It supports one-time passwords (OTP) and second-factor authenticators (WebAuthn). In this guide, you will need to enroll an OTP authenticator application using the QR code on the Teleport welcome screen.

brew install teleport

curl -O https://cdn.teleport.dev/teleport-v13.0.3-windows-amd64-bin.zip
Unzip the archive and move `tsh.exe` to your %PATH%

curl -O https://get.gravitational.com/teleport-v13.0.3-linux-amd64-bin.tar.gz
tar -xzf teleport-v13.0.3-linux-amd64-bin.tar.gz
cd teleport
sudo ./install
Teleport binaries have been copied to /usr/local/bin
To configure the systemd service for Teleport take a look at examples/systemd/README.mdx

Replace teleport.example.com with your Teleport cluster's public address as configured above.
tsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com --user=teleport-admin
> Profile URL:        https://teleport.example.com:443
  Logged in as:       teleport-admin
  Cluster:            teleport.example.com
  Roles:              access, editor
  Logins:             root, ubuntu, ec2-user
  Kubernetes:         enabled
  Valid until:        2022-04-26 03:04:46 -0400 EDT [valid for 12h0m0s]
  Extensions:         permit-agent-forwarding, permit-port-forwarding, permit-pty

Step 4/4. Enroll your infrastructure

With Teleport, you can protect all of the resources in your infrastructure behind a single identity-aware access proxy, including servers, databases, applications, Kubernetes clusters, Windows desktops, and cloud provider APIs.

To enroll a resource with Teleport, visit the Web UI and click the name of a resource on the sidebar, e.g., Servers, Applications, and Kubernetes. The Web UI will show you the steps you can take to enroll that resource.

In the Servers tab, you can see that you have already enrolled your Linux server.

Next steps

Now that you have launched your Teleport cluster and added your first resources, see how to use Teleport to set up secure access to your infrastructure.

Read the Manage Access documentation to get started setting up role-based access controls for all of the resources you registered.

To learn about common Day Two operations when managing a Teleport cluster, read the Manage your Cluster guides.

You can also read more about how to protect your infrastructure with Teleport, including:

• Applications
• Databases
• Kubernetes clusters
• Servers
• Windows desktops
• Service accounts (via Machine ID)

Further reading

• How Let's Encrypt uses the ACME protocol to issue certificates.
• Configuration for the teleport daemon relies on systemd. For more information on how the teleport service daemon is configured, see our guide on how to Run Teleport as a Daemon.