User authorization is the act of defining access policies for authenticated CockroachDB users. CockroachDB allows you to create, manage, and remove your cluster's SQL users and assign SQL-level privileges to the users. Additionally, you can use role-based access management (RBAC) for simplified user management.
Users and roles
There is no technical distinction between a role or user in CockroachDB. A role/user can:
- be permitted to log in to the SQL shell.
- be granted privileges to specific actions and database objects.
- be a member of other users/roles, inheriting their privileges.
- have other users/roles as members that inherit its privileges.
We refer to these as "roles" when they are created for managing the privileges of their member "users" and not for logging in directly, which is typically reserved for "users".
The SQL statements CREATE USER
and CREATE ROLE
will create the same entity with one exception: CREATE ROLE
will add the NOLOGIN
option by default, preventing the user/role from being used to log in. Otherwise, for enhanced PostgreSQL compatibility, the keywords ROLE
and USER
can be used interchangeably in SQL statements.
Throughout the documentation, however, we will refer to a "user" or "role" based on the intended purpose of the entity.
SQL users
A SQL user can interact with a CockroachDB database using the built-in SQL shell or through an application.
Create and manage users
Use the CREATE USER
and DROP USER
statements to create and remove users, the ALTER USER
statement to add or change a user's password and role options, the GRANT
and REVOKE
statements to manage the user’s privileges, and the SHOW USERS
statement to list users.
A new user must be granted the required privileges for each database and table that the user needs to access.
By default, a new user belongs to the public
role and has no privileges other than those assigned to the public
role. For more information, see Public role.
root
user
The root
user is created by default for each cluster. The root
user is assigned to the admin
role and has all privileges across the cluster.
For secure clusters, in addition to generating the client certificate for the root
user, you can assign or change the password for the root
user using the ALTER USER
statement.
Roles
A role is a group of users and/or other roles for which you can grant or revoke privileges as a whole. To simplify access management, create a role and grant privileges to the role, then create SQL users and grant them membership to the role.
Create and manage roles
To create and manage your cluster's roles, use the following statements:
Statement | Description |
---|---|
CREATE ROLE |
Create SQL roles. |
DROP ROLE |
Remove one or more SQL roles. |
GRANT |
Manage each role or user's SQL privileges for interacting with specific databases and tables, or add a role or user as a member to a role. |
REVOKE |
Revoke privileges from users and/or roles, or revoke a role or user's membership to a role. |
SHOW ROLES |
List the roles for all databases. |
SHOW GRANTS |
List the privileges granted to users. |
Default roles
The admin
and public
roles exist by default.
admin
role
The admin
role is created by default and cannot be dropped. Users belonging to the admin
role have all privileges for all database objects across the cluster. The root
user belongs to the admin
role by default.
An admin
user is a member of the admin
role. Only admin
users can use CREATE ROLE
and DROP ROLE
.
To assign a user to the admin
role:
> GRANT admin TO <username>;
public
role
All new users and roles belong to the public
role by default. You can grant and revoke the privileges on the public
role.
Terminology
Role admin
A role admin
is a member of the role that's allowed to grant or revoke role membership to other users for that specific role. To create a role admin
, use WITH ADMIN OPTION
.
The terms “admin
role” and “role admin
” can be confusing. A user who is a member of the admin
role has all privileges on all database objects across the entire cluster, whereas a role admin
has privileges limited to the role they are a member of. Assign the admin
role to a SQL user if you want the user to have privileges across the cluster. Make a SQL user the role admin
if you want to limit the user’s privileges to its current role, but with an option to grant or revoke role membership to other users. This applies to the admin
role as well - only admin users with the WITH ADMIN OPTION
can add or remove other users from the admin
role.
Direct member
A user or role that is an immediate member of the role.
Example: A is a member of B.
Indirect member
A user or role that is a member of the role by association.
Example: A is a member of C ... is a member of B where "..." is an arbitrary number of memberships.
Object ownership
All CockroachDB objects (such as databases, tables, schemas, and types) must have owners. The user that created the object is the default owner of the object and has ALL
privileges on the object. Similarly, any roles that are members of the owner role also have all privileges on the object.
All objects that do not have owners (for example, objects created before upgrading to v20.2) have admin
set as the default owner, with the exception of system objects. System objects without owners have node
as their owner.
To allow another user to use the object, the owner can assign privileges to the other user. Members of the admin
role have ALL
privileges on all objects.
Users that own objects cannot be dropped until the ownership is transferred to another user.
Privileges
When a user connects to a database, either via the built-in SQL client or a client driver, CockroachDB checks the user and role's privileges for each statement executed. If the user does not have sufficient privileges for a statement, CockroachDB gives an error.
Supported privileges
Roles and users can be granted the following privileges:
Privilege | Levels |
---|---|
ALL |
Database, Schema, Table, Type |
CREATE |
Database, Schema, Table |
DROP |
Database, Table |
GRANT |
Database, Schema, Table, Type |
CONNECT |
Database |
SELECT |
Table, Database |
INSERT |
Table |
DELETE |
Table |
UPDATE |
Table |
USAGE |
Schema, Type |
ZONECONFIG |
Database, Table |
Assign privileges
Use the GRANT
and REVOKE
statements to manage privileges for users and roles.
Take the following points into consideration while granting privileges to roles and users:
When a role or user is granted privileges for a database, new tables created in the database will inherit the privileges, but the privileges can then be changed. To grant privileges to a user on all existing tables in a database, see Grant privileges on all tables in a database
Note:The user does not get privileges to existing tables in the database.
When a role or user is granted privileges for a table, the privileges are limited to the table.
In CockroachDB, privileges are granted to users and roles at the database and table levels. They are not yet supported for other granularities such as columns or rows.
The
root
user automatically belongs to theadmin
role and has theALL
privilege for new databases.For privileges required by specific statements, see the documentation for the respective SQL statement.
Authorization best practices
We recommend the following best practices to set up access control for your clusters:
- Use the
root
user only for database administration tasks such as creating and managing other users, creating and managing roles, and creating and managing databases. Do not use theroot
user for applications; instead, create users or roles with specific privileges based on your application’s access requirements. - Use the "least privilege model" to grant privileges to users and roles.
Example
The following example uses MovR, a fictional vehicle-sharing application, to demonstrate CockroachDB SQL statements. For more information about the MovR example application and dataset, see MovR: A Global Vehicle-sharing App.
Let's say we want to create the following access control setup for the movr
database:
- One database admin (named
db_admin
) who can perform all database operations for existing tables as well as for tables added in the future. - One app user (named
app_user
) who can add, read update, and delete vehicles from thevehicles
table. - One user (named
report_user
) who can only read thevehicles
table.
Use the
cockroach demo
command to load themovr
database and dataset into a CockroachDB cluster:$ cockroach demo
Create the database admin (named
db_admin
) who can perform all database operations for existing tables as well as for tables added in the future:> CREATE USER db_admin;
Grant all privileges on database
movr
to userdb_admin
:> GRANT ALL ON DATABASE movr TO db_admin;
Grant all privileges on all tables in database
movr
to userdb_admin
:> GRANT ALL ON TABLE * TO db_admin;
Verify that
db_admin
has all privileges:> SHOW GRANTS FOR db_admin;
database_name | schema_name | table_name | grantee | privilege_type +---------------+--------------------+----------------------------+----------+----------------+ movr | crdb_internal | NULL | db_admin | ALL movr | information_schema | NULL | db_admin | ALL movr | pg_catalog | NULL | db_admin | ALL movr | public | NULL | db_admin | ALL movr | public | promo_codes | db_admin | ALL movr | public | rides | db_admin | ALL movr | public | user_promo_codes | db_admin | ALL movr | public | users | db_admin | ALL movr | public | vehicle_location_histories | db_admin | ALL movr | public | vehicles | db_admin | ALL (10 rows)
As the
root
user, create a SQL user namedapp_user
with permissions to add, read, update, and delete vehicles in thevehicles
table:> CREATE USER app_user;
> GRANT INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE, SELECT ON vehicles TO app_user;
> SHOW GRANTS FOR app_user;
database_name | schema_name | table_name | grantee | privilege_type +---------------+-------------+------------+----------+----------------+ movr | public | vehicles | app_user | DELETE movr | public | vehicles | app_user | INSERT movr | public | vehicles | app_user | SELECT movr | public | vehicles | app_user | UPDATE (4 rows)
As the
root
user, create a SQL user namedreport_user
with permissions to only read from thevehicles
table:> CREATE USER report_user;
> GRANT SELECT ON vehicles TO report_user;
> SHOW GRANTS FOR report_user;
database_name | schema_name | table_name | grantee | privilege_type +---------------+-------------+------------+-------------+----------------+ movr | public | vehicles | report_user | SELECT (1 row)
The following example uses MovR, a fictional vehicle-sharing application, to demonstrate CockroachDB SQL statements. For more information about the MovR example application and dataset, see MovR: A Global Vehicle-sharing App.
Let's say we want to create the following access control setup for the movr
database:
- Two database admins (named
db_admin_1
anddb_admin_2
) who can perform all database operations for existing tables as well as for tables added in the future. - Three app users (named
app_user_1
,app_user_2
, andapp_user_3
) who can add, read update, and delete vehicles from thevehicles
table. - Five users (named
report_user_1
,report_user_2
,report_user_3
,report_user_4
,report_user_5
) who can only read thevehicles
table.
Use the
cockroach demo
command to load themovr
database and dataset into a CockroachDB cluster.:$ cockroach demo
Create the database admin role (named
db_admin_role
) whose members can perform all database operations for existing tables as well as for tables added in the future:> CREATE ROLE db_admin_role;
> SHOW ROLES;
username | options | member_of ----------------+------------+------------ admin | CREATEROLE | {} db_admin_role | NOLOGIN | {} root | CREATEROLE | {admin} (3 rows)
> GRANT ALL ON DATABASE movr TO db_admin_role;
> GRANT ALL ON TABLE * TO db_admin_role;
> SHOW GRANTS ON DATABASE movr;
database_name | schema_name | grantee | privilege_type ----------------+--------------------+---------------+----------------- movr | crdb_internal | admin | ALL movr | crdb_internal | db_admin_role | ALL movr | crdb_internal | root | ALL movr | information_schema | admin | ALL movr | information_schema | db_admin_role | ALL movr | information_schema | root | ALL movr | pg_catalog | admin | ALL movr | pg_catalog | db_admin_role | ALL movr | pg_catalog | root | ALL movr | public | admin | ALL movr | public | db_admin_role | ALL movr | public | root | ALL (12 rows)
Create two database admin users (named
db_admin_1
anddb_admin_2
) and grant them membership to thedb_admin_role
role:> CREATE USER db_admin_1;
> CREATE USER db_admin_2;
> GRANT db_admin_role TO db_admin_1, db_admin_2;
Create a role named
app_user_role
whose members can add, read update, and delete vehicles to thevehicles
table.> CREATE ROLE app_user_role;
> SHOW ROLES;
username | options | member_of ----------------+------------+------------------ admin | CREATEROLE | {} app_user_role | NOLOGIN | {} db_admin_1 | | {db_admin_role} db_admin_2 | | {db_admin_role} db_admin_role | NOLOGIN | {} root | CREATEROLE | {admin} (6 rows)
> GRANT INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, SELECT ON TABLE vehicles TO app_user_role;
> SHOW GRANTS ON vehicles;
database_name | schema_name | table_name | grantee | privilege_type ----------------+-------------+------------+---------------+----------------- movr | public | vehicles | admin | ALL movr | public | vehicles | app_user_role | DELETE movr | public | vehicles | app_user_role | INSERT movr | public | vehicles | app_user_role | SELECT movr | public | vehicles | app_user_role | UPDATE movr | public | vehicles | db_admin_role | ALL movr | public | vehicles | root | ALL (7 rows)
Create three app users (named
app_user_1
,app_user_2
, andapp_user_3
) and grant them membership to theapp_user_role
role:> CREATE USER app_user_1;
> CREATE USER app_user_2;
> CREATE USER app_user_3;
> GRANT app_user_role TO app_user_1, app_user_2, app_user_3;
Create a role named
report_user_role
whose members can only read thevehicles
table.> CREATE ROLE report_user_role;
> SHOW ROLES;
username | options | member_of -------------------+------------+------------------ admin | CREATEROLE | {} app_user_1 | | {app_user_role} app_user_2 | | {app_user_role} app_user_3 | | {app_user_role} app_user_role | NOLOGIN | {} db_admin_1 | | {db_admin_role} db_admin_2 | | {db_admin_role} db_admin_role | NOLOGIN | {} report_user_role | NOLOGIN | {} root | CREATEROLE | {admin} (10 rows)
> GRANT SELECT ON vehicles TO report_user_role;
> SHOW GRANTS ON vehicles;
database_name | schema_name | table_name | grantee | privilege_type ----------------+-------------+------------+------------------+----------------- movr | public | vehicles | admin | ALL movr | public | vehicles | app_user_role | DELETE movr | public | vehicles | app_user_role | INSERT movr | public | vehicles | app_user_role | SELECT movr | public | vehicles | app_user_role | UPDATE movr | public | vehicles | db_admin_role | ALL movr | public | vehicles | report_user_role | SELECT movr | public | vehicles | root | ALL (8 rows)
Create five report users (named
report_user_1
,report_user_2
,report_user_3
,report_user_4
, andreport_user_5
) and grant them membership to thereport_user_role
role:> CREATE USER report_user_1;
> CREATE USER report_user_2;
> CREATE USER report_user_3;
> CREATE USER report_user_4;
> CREATE USER report_user_5;
> GRANT report_user_role TO report_user_1, report_user_2, report_user_3, report_user_4, report_user_5;