Jenkins - Unix users/Groups

Authentication is one of the internal feature available in Jenkins. Jenkins does have its own internal database for holding user name and passwords. Jenkins also provides a way to allow login using underlying operating system usernames. This will allow users to login using their system login credentials. This uses Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM), and also works fine with NIS.

1. In order to do this, first change the permission for the /etc/shadow file so that jenkins user can read them. This is since jenkins server is running using the jenkins userID

chmod g+r /etc/shadow

2. Now add root group to jenkins

[root@ip-10-149-198-16 jenkins]# usermod -a -G root jenkins

[root@ip-10-149-198-16 jenkins]# groups jenkins

jenkins : jenkins root

3. Once the above changes are done,

login to jenkins server with the admin account and in manage jenkins, select “unix user/groups” as authentication area

Once done , logout and you can login using an user name and password from unix machines
This is how we can use our existing system credentials to login to jenkins server