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Talos v0.11 introduced initial support for role-based access control (RBAC). This guide will explain what that is and how to enable it without losing access to the cluster.

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RBAC in Talos

Talos uses certificates to authorize users. The certificate subject’s organization field is used to encode user roles. There is a set of predefined roles that allow access to different API methods:
  • os:admin grants access to all methods;
  • os:operator grants everything os:reader role does, plus additional methods: rebooting, shutting down, etcd backup, etcd alarm management, and so on;
  • os:reader grants access to “safe” methods (for example, that includes the ability to list files, but does not include the ability to read files content);
  • os:etcd:backup grants access to /machine.MachineService/EtcdSnapshot method.
Roles in the current talosconfig can be checked with the following command: 
$ talosctl config info

[...]
Roles:               os:admin
[...]
RBAC is enabled by default in new clusters created with talosctl v0.11+ and disabled otherwise.

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Enabling RBAC

First, both the Talos cluster and talosctl tool should be upgraded. Then the talosctl config new command should be used to generate a new client configuration with the os:admin role. Additional configurations and certificates for different roles can be generated by passing --roles flag: 
talosctl config new --roles=os:reader reader
That command will create a new client configuration file reader with a new certificate with os:reader role. After that, RBAC should be enabled in the machine configuration: 
machine:
  features:
    rbac: true