Machines

CrowdSec is composed of different components that communicate via a Local API. To access it, the various components (CrowdSec agent, cscli and bouncers) need to be authenticated.

info

This documentation is be relevant mostly to administrators that need to setup distributed architectures. Single machine users (or with several machines with independent crowdsec installations) can likely skip this part.

There are two kind of access to the local api :

• machines: a login/password authentication used by cscli and CrowdSec, it allows to post, get and delete decisions and alerts.
• bouncers: a token authentication used by bouncers to query the decisions, it only allows to get decisions.

Machines authentication

caution

The cscli machines command interacts directly with the database (machines add and delete are not implemented in the API), therefore it must have the correct database configuration.

$ cscli machines list

You can view the registered machines with list, and add or delete them:

sudo cscli machines add mytestmachine -a
INFO[0004] Machine 'mytestmachine' created successfully       
INFO[0004] API credentials dumped to '/etc/crowdsec/local_api_credentials.yaml' 
sudo cscli machines delete 82929df7ee394b73b81252fe3b4e5020

cscli machines example

sudo cscli machines list
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 NAME                              IP ADDRESS  LAST UPDATE                STATUS  VERSION                                         
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 82929df7ee394b73b81252fe3b4e5020  127.0.0.1   2020-10-31T14:06:32+01:00  ✔️      v0.3.6-3d6ce33908409f2a830af6551a7f5e37f2a4728f 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sudo cscli machines add mytestmachine -a
INFO[0004] Machine 'mytestmachine' created successfully       
INFO[0004] API credentials dumped to '/etc/crowdsec/local_api_credentials.yaml' 
sudo cscli machines list      
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 NAME                              IP ADDRESS  LAST UPDATE                STATUS  VERSION                                         
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 82929df7ee394b73b81252fe3b4e5020  127.0.0.1   2020-10-31T14:06:32+01:00  ✔️      v0.3.6-3d6ce33908409f2a830af6551a7f5e37f2a4728f 
 mytestmachine                     127.0.0.1   2020-11-01T11:37:19+01:00  ✔️      v0.3.6-6a18458badf8ae5fed8d5f1bb96fc7a59c96163c 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sudo cscli machines delete -m 82929df7ee394b73b81252fe3b4e5020
sudo cscli machines list                                      
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 NAME     IP ADDRESS  LAST UPDATE                STATUS  VERSION                                         
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 mytestmachine  127.0.0.1   2020-11-01T11:37:19+01:00  ✔️      v0.3.6-6a18458badf8ae5fed8d5f1bb96fc7a59c96163c 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Machine register

It is also possible to register from an agent-only machine to the Local API with cscli lapi and then validate it on the Local API machine.

CrowdSec Agent Machine

sudo cscli lapi register --url [crowdsec_local_api_url] --machine [your_machine_name] 

CrowdSec Local API Machine

sudo cscli machines list

Get the name of the machine that has just registered and validate it:

sudo cscli machines validate [machine_name]