feat!: drop the built-in auth in favour of Authelia
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BREAKING CHANGE: PASSWORD is gone and AUTH and CERTRESOLVER are required.
The server's compose.yaml and .env must be updated in the same deploy — the
new image ignores PASSWORD, and the old one refuses to start without it.

Authelia now sits in front of Traefik, so the app was asking for a second
password at the same door. Two prompts, and the weaker of the two was the one
holding a single shared secret with no sessions, no MFA and no revocation.
Deleting it is the whole change: Authelia already does this properly, once,
for every service on the host.

Gone: auth(), challenge(), the whole of throttle.go and its tests, and
golang.org/x/time with them. routes() returns the bare mux, /healthz is an
ordinary route on it, and the smoke script drops sixty -u flags. Roughly 230
lines removed and nothing written to replace them.

What holds the app up now, both asserted in compose.yaml:

- The router names the Authelia middleware through AUTH. Traefik takes a
  router out of service when its middleware does not resolve, so a typo or an
  unset variable fails shut rather than serving the app open.
- The container still publishes no ports, so the proxy is the only thing that
  can reach it. Publishing 8080 would now bypass authentication outright, not
  merely TLS — the comment there says so.

certresolver replaces the bare tls=true, parameterised as CERTRESOLVER: the
server had been carrying that label by hand since the first deploy. Naming a
resolver implies tls=true, so it stays one label.

TestAuth and TestHealthzSkipsAuth are replaced by one test asserting every
route answers without credentials — a 401 from here would now mean auth had
crept back in.
This commit is contained in:
Esa Kataja
2026-09-06 13:39:35 +03:00
parent 57d5faf65f
commit cf2cb0ce0a
13 changed files with 159 additions and 446 deletions
+21 -17
View File
@@ -55,7 +55,7 @@ One static Go binary. No Node.js, no bundler, no separate database server.
| Interactivity | [Datastar](https://data-star.dev) — signals and DOM patching in one ~11 kB script |
| Styling | hand-written CSS, `light-dark()` for themes |
| Database | SQLite via `modernc.org/sqlite` (pure Go) |
| Auth | HTTP Basic, one shared household password |
| Auth | none in-app — Authelia, via a Traefik forward-auth middleware |
| Runtime image | `FROM scratch` |
Working on it: [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md) — branches, commit messages,
@@ -196,7 +196,6 @@ Everything is environment variables. `.env` is gitignored; start from
| Variable | Default | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| `PASSWORD` | *required* | Shared password. The app will not start without it. |
| `DB` | `./data/foodster.db` | SQLite file path; the directory is created if missing. |
| `ENV` | `prod` | Anything else is prefixed to the tab title (`dev · Foodster`). |
| `ADDR` | `:8080` | Listen address. Only useful for a second local instance. |
@@ -205,6 +204,8 @@ Everything is environment variables. `.env` is gitignored; start from
| `REPO` | *required to run* | Image repository, no tag. Used by `compose.yaml`. |
| `TAG` | `latest` | Tag to run under compose. |
| `HOST` | *required to run* | Hostname Traefik routes to. |
| `AUTH` | *required to run* | Traefik middleware that authenticates the app, e.g. `authelia@docker`. |
| `CERTRESOLVER` | *required to run* | Traefik certificate resolver for `HOST`. |
Names carry no prefix: the container gives them their own namespace already.
`PUID`/`PGID` are the exception — `UID` is read-only in bash, so a value set
@@ -254,24 +255,27 @@ docker compose restart
## Security
Access is a single shared password over HTTP Basic — no accounts, no
sessions. Credentials are compared in constant time over SHA-256 digests, so
neither the password nor its length leaks through timing.
**The app has no authentication of its own.** It trusts every request it
receives, because the only thing that can reach it is Traefik, and Traefik
hands each request to Authelia first. Access control, sessions, brute-force
protection and multi-factor all live there, where they are configured once
for every service on the host instead of reimplemented per app.
The app is served on a public hostname behind Traefik, which terminates TLS,
so the credentials are encrypted in transit. That leaves the password as the
only thing between the internet and the app, so wrong guesses are rate
limited per client address: five in a burst, then one per ten seconds,
answered with `429`. Requests carrying no `Authorization` header are not
charged — that is the handshake every browser session begins with, and
counting it would lock the household out for simply opening the app.
Two things make that safe, and both must hold:
`X-Forwarded-For` is trusted only when the connection came from a private
address, meaning it arrived through the proxy. A client connecting directly
could otherwise forge a new address per attempt and skip the limiter.
- **`AUTH` names the Authelia middleware** on the router. It is the whole of
the app's access control. Traefik takes a router out of service when its
middleware does not resolve, so a typo fails shut rather than open.
- **The container publishes no ports.** It is reachable only over the shared
`traefik` network. Publishing `8080` would put an unauthenticated,
unencrypted copy of the app on the host and defeat both of the above.
**None of this replaces a strong `PASSWORD`.** Rate limiting removes
brute force as a practical route; it does not make a guessable password safe.
`/healthz` returns nothing but the version, so it is safe to bypass in
Authelia if a monitor needs to poll it from outside.
Earlier versions carried HTTP Basic auth and a per-IP guess limiter. Both
were removed once Authelia was in front: two prompts for one door, and the
weaker of the two was the one holding a shared password.
## Mockups