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Version: 19.x (unreleased)

Machine & Workload Identity with tctl

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tctl is the Teleport cluster management CLI tool. Whilst it usually uses the credentials from the locally logged in user, it is also possible to use credentials issued by Machine & Workload Identity. This allows tctl to be leveraged as part of a custom automation workflow deployed in a non-interactive environment (e.g. CI/CD).

In this guide, you will configure tbot to produce credentials for tctl, and then use tctl to deploy Teleport roles defined in files.

Prerequisites​

  • A running Teleport cluster accessible at a hostname with a valid TLS certificate. If you want to get started with Teleport, sign up for a free trial or set up a demo environment.

  • The tctl and tsh clients.

    Installing tctl and tsh clients

    1. Determine the version of your Teleport cluster. The tctl and tsh clients must be at most one major version behind your Teleport cluster version. Send a GET request to the Proxy Service at /v1/webapi/find and use a JSON query tool to obtain your cluster version. Replace teleport.example.com:443 with the web address of your Teleport Proxy Service:

      TELEPORT_DOMAIN=teleport.example.com:443
      TELEPORT_VERSION="$(curl -s https://$TELEPORT_DOMAIN/v1/webapi/find | jq -r '.server_version')"

    2. Follow the instructions for your platform to install tctl and tsh clients:

      Download the signed macOS .pkg installer for Teleport, which includes the tctl and tsh clients:

      curl -O https://cdn.teleport.dev/teleport-${TELEPORT_VERSION?}.pkg

      In Finder double-click the pkg file to begin installation.

      danger

      Using Homebrew to install Teleport is not supported. The Teleport package in Homebrew is not maintained by Teleport and we can't guarantee its reliability or security.

    Connecting with TLS routing disabled

    This guide's commands assume your Teleport cluster uses TLS routing (proxy_listener_mode: multiplex), where the tctl and tsh clients reach every Teleport service through the Proxy Service's web address on port 443. If you're not sure whether this applies to your cluster, check with whoever manages it.

    If your cluster uses separate listener ports instead, adjust ports as follows:

    • tsh commands (e.g., tsh login --proxy=...): continue using the Proxy Service web address on port 3080 (or 443 if behind a load balancer). Do not change these to port 3025.

    • Direct tctl or Auth Service API commands: use port 3025 for the Auth Service gRPC listener:

      tctl status --auth-server=teleport.example.com:3025
  • Check that you can connect to your Teleport cluster and verify that you can run tctl and tsh commands using your current credentials.

    1. Assign teleport.example.com to the domain name of the Teleport Proxy Service in your cluster and [email protected] to your Teleport username.

    2. Authenticate to your Teleport cluster. This depends on whether your shell is interactive or not.

      In an interactive shell: Run the following command. By default, this triggers a multi-factor authentication prompt:

      tsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com --user=[email protected]
      tctl status
      Cluster  teleport.example.com
      Version  19.0.0-dev
      CA pin   sha256:abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678

      On non-interactive environments: If you are running tsh and tctl as an AI agent, in a CI/CD environment, or similar, make sure the TELEPORT_IDENTITY_FILE environment variable is assigned to a valid file path with credentials for your cluster. tsh and tctl read the file path from the environment variable and do not require a separate authentication step. If there is no identity file available, we recommend that you set up Machine ID to provision one automatically.

      When executing tctl commands with an identity file, you must pass the --auth-server flag to provide the Teleport Auth Service address, which is not included in the identity file. If you provide the Proxy Service address, tctl connects to the Proxy Service, which forwards traffic to and from the Teleport Auth Service. Update 443 to 3025 if you are contacting the Auth Service directly with tctl:

      tctl status --auth-server=teleport.example.com:443

      For tsh commands that read an identity file, you must pass the --proxy flag, which points tsh to the address of the Teleport Proxy Service:

      tsh status --proxy=teleport.example.com

      Ensure client commands can access your identity file. Replace path/to/identity/file with the path to your identity file:

      export TELEPORT_IDENTITY_FILE="${TELEPORT_IDENTITY_FILE:-path/to/identity/file}"

      Add the --auth-server or --proxy flags to all subsequent tctl and tsh commands.

    If you can connect to the cluster and run the tctl status command, you can use your current credentials to run subsequent tctl commands from your workstation. If you host your own Teleport cluster, you can also run tctl commands on the computer that hosts the Teleport Auth Service for full permissions.
  • tbot must already be installed and configured on the machine that will use tctl. For more information, see the deployment guides.

Step 1/3. Configure RBAC​

First, Teleport must be configured to allow the credentials produced by tbot to modify the Teleport configuration. This is done by creating a role that grants the necessary permissions and then assigning this role to a Bot.

It's important to grant as few privileges as possible in order to limit the blast radius of an attack, so in this example we grant only the ability to create and update roles.

Create a file called role.yaml with the following content:

kind: role
version: v6
metadata:
  name: example-role
spec:
  allow:
    rules:
    - resources:
      # Specify the names of resources you wish to manage with tctl.
      # For this guide, we will only manage roles.
      - role
      verbs:
      - create
      - read
      - update
      - delete
      - list

Replace example-role with a descriptive name related to your use case.

Use tctl create -f ./role.yaml to create the role.

tip

You can also create and edit roles using the Web UI. Go to Access -> Roles and click Create New Role or pick an existing role to edit.

Now, use tctl bots update to add the role to the Bot. Replace example with the name of the Bot you created in the deployment guide and example-role with the name of the role you just created:

tctl bots update example --add-roles example-role

Step 2/3. Configure tbot output service​

Now, tbot needs to be configured with a service that will produce the credentials needed by tctl. As tctl will be accessing the Teleport API, the correct service type to use is identity.

For this guide, the directory destination will be used. This will write these credentials to a specified directory on disk. Ensure that this directory can be written to by the Linux user that tbot runs as, and that it can be read by the Linux user that tctl will run as.

Modify your tbot configuration to add an identity output:

services:
- type: identity
  destination:
    type: directory
    # For this guide, /opt/machine-id is used as the destination directory.
    # You may wish to customize this. Multiple output services cannot share the
    # same destination.
    path: /opt/machine-id

Apply your configuration. The command to execute depends on how you are running tbot.

If you are running tbot as a background service, execute the following command, which instructs tbot to reload its configuration:

sudo systemctl reload tbot

If you are running tbot in one-shot mode, before you attempt to access the generated credentials later, you must execute tbot, pointing it to the location of its configuration file (/etc/tbot.yaml in the example below):

tbot start -c /etc/tbot.yaml

You should now see an identity file under /opt/machine-id. This contains the private key and signed certificates needed by tctl to authenticate with the Teleport Auth Service.

Step 3/3. Use tctl with the identity output service​

As an example, tctl will be used to apply a directory of YAML files that define Teleport roles. If these were stored in version control (e.g., git) and this were executed on change, this would form the basis for managing Teleport roles in a GitOps style.

The example role will not be useful within the context of your Teleport cluster and should be modified once you have completed this guide.

Create a directory called roles/ and within it create example.yaml:

kind: role
version: v6
metadata:
  name: tctl-test
spec:
  # This role does nothing as it is an example role.
  allow: {}

To configure tctl to use the identity file, the -i flag is used. As the identity file does not specify the address of Teleport, --auth-server must also be specified with the address of your Teleport Proxy or Teleport Auth Server.

Run tctl, replacing example.teleport.sh:443 with the address of your Teleport Proxy or Auth Service and /opt/machine-id/identity with the path to the generated identity file if you have modified this:

tctl --auth-server example.teleport.sh:443 -i /opt/machine-id/identity create -f roles/*.yaml

If you run tctl on a host that also runs a Teleport service (with /etc/teleport.yaml present), the local configuration may conflict with the --auth-server flag. Set TELEPORT_CONFIG_FILE="" to bypass the local configuration:

TELEPORT_CONFIG_FILE="" tctl --auth-server example.teleport.sh:443 -i /opt/machine-id/identity create -f roles/*.yaml

Check your Teleport cluster, ensuring the role has been created.

tctl get role/tctl-test

Next steps​