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Role-Base Access Control

Manage Users and Roles on Self-Managed Deployments

On this page

  • Prerequisites
  • Create a User-Defined Role
  • Modify Access for an Existing User
  • Modify the Password for an Existing User
  • View a User's Roles
  • View a Role's Privileges

This tutorial provides examples for user and role management under MongoDB's authorization model for self-managed deployments. To create a new user, see Create a User on Self-Managed Deployments.

Prerequisites

If you have enabled access control for your deployment, you must authenticate as a user with the required privileges specified in each section. To perform the operations listed in this tutorial, user administrators require the userAdminAnyDatabase role, or userAdmin role in the specific databases. For details on adding a user administrator as the first user, see Enable Access Control on Self-Managed Deployments

Create a User-Defined Role

Note

To create user-defined roles in MongoDB Atlas, see Add Custom Roles in the MongoDB Atlas documentation.

Roles grant users access to MongoDB resources. MongoDB provides a number of built-in roles that administrators can use to control access to a MongoDB system. However, if these roles cannot describe the desired set of privileges, you can create new roles in a particular database.

Except for roles created in the admin database, a role can only include privileges that apply to its database and can only inherit from other roles in its database.

A role created in the admin database can include privileges that apply to the admin database, other databases or to the cluster resource, and can inherit from roles in other databases as well as the admin database.

To create a new role, use the db.createRole() method, specifying the privileges in the privileges array and the inherited roles in the roles array.

MongoDB uses the combination of the database name and the role name to uniquely define a role. Each role is scoped to the database in which you create the role, but MongoDB stores all role information in the admin.system.roles collection in the admin database.

Prerequisites

To create a role in a database, you must have:

  • the createRole action on that database resource.

  • the grantRole action on that database to specify privileges for the new role as well as to specify roles to inherit from.

Built-in roles userAdmin and userAdminAnyDatabase provide createRole and grantRole actions on their respective resources.

To create a role with authenticationRestrictions specified, you must have the setAuthenticationRestriction action on the database resource which the role is created.

To add custom user-defined roles with mongosh, see the following examples:

Create a Role to Manage Current Operations

The following example creates a role named manageOpRole which provides only the privileges to run both db.currentOp() and db.killOp(). [1]

Note

Users do not need any specific privileges to view or kill their own operations on mongod instances. See db.currentOp() and db.killOp() for details.

1

Connect to MongoDB with the appropriate privileges.

Connect to mongod or mongos with the privileges specified in the Prerequisites section.

The following procedure uses the myUserAdmin created in Enable Access Control on Self-Managed Deployments.

mongosh --port 27017 -u myUserAdmin -p 'abc123' --authenticationDatabase 'admin'

The myUserAdmin has privileges to create roles in the admin as well as other databases.

2

Create a new role to manage current operations.

manageOpRole has privileges that act on multiple databases as well as the cluster resource. As such, you must create the role in the admin database.

use admin
db.createRole(
   {
     role: "manageOpRole", 
     privileges: [
       { resource: { cluster: true }, actions: [ "killop", "inprog" ] },
       { resource: { db: "", collection: "" }, actions: [ "killCursors" ] }
     ],
     roles: []
   }
)

The new role grants permissions to kill any operations.

Warning

Terminate running operations with extreme caution. Only use the db.killOp() method or killOp command to terminate operations initiated by clients and do not terminate internal database operations.

[1] The built-in role clusterMonitor also provides the privilege to run db.currentOp() along with other privileges, and the built-in role hostManager provides the privilege to run db.killOp() along with other privileges.

Create a Role to Run mongostat

The following example creates a role named mongostatRole that provides only the privileges to run mongostat. [2]

1

Connect to MongoDB with the appropriate privileges.

Connect to mongod or mongos with the privileges specified in the Prerequisites section.

The following procedure uses the myUserAdmin created in Enable Access Control on Self-Managed Deployments.

mongosh --port 27017 -u myUserAdmin -p 'abc123' --authenticationDatabase 'admin'

The myUserAdmin has privileges to create roles in the admin as well as other databases.

2

Create a new role to manage current operations.

mongostatRole has privileges that act on the cluster resource. As such, you must create the role in the admin database.

use admin
db.createRole(
   {
     role: "mongostatRole", 
     privileges: [
       { resource: { cluster: true }, actions: [ "serverStatus" ] }
     ],
     roles: []
   }
)
[2] The built-in role clusterMonitor also provides the privilege to run mongostat along with other privileges.

Create a Role to Drop system.views Collection across Databases

The following example creates a role named dropSystemViewsAnyDatabase that provides the privileges to drop the system.views collection in any database.

1

Connect to MongoDB with the appropriate privileges.

Connect to mongod or mongos with the privileges specified in the Prerequisites section.

The following procedure uses the myUserAdmin created in Enable Access Control on Self-Managed Deployments.

mongosh --port 27017 -u myUserAdmin -p 'abc123' --authenticationDatabase 'admin'

The myUserAdmin has privileges to create roles in the admin as well as other databases.

2

Create a new role to drop the system.views collection in any database.

For the role, specify a privilege that consists of:

use admin
db.createRole(
   {
     role: "dropSystemViewsAnyDatabase", 
     privileges: [
       {
         actions: [ "dropCollection" ],
         resource: { db: "", collection: "system.views" }
       }
     ],
     roles: []
   }
)

Modify Access for an Existing User

Note

To modify an existing database user's roles in MongoDB Atlas, see Modify Database Users in the MongoDB Atlas documentation.

Prerequisites

  • You must have the grantRole action on a database to grant a role on that database.

  • You must have the revokeRole action on a database to revoke a role on that database.

  • To view a role's information, you must be either explicitly granted the role or must have the viewRole action on the role's database.

Procedure

1

Connect to MongoDB with the appropriate privileges.

Connect to mongod or mongos as a user with the privileges specified in the prerequisite section.

The following procedure uses the myUserAdmin created in Enable Access Control on Self-Managed Deployments.

mongosh --port 27017 -u myUserAdmin -p 'abc123' --authenticationDatabase 'admin'
2

Identify the user's roles and privileges.

To display the roles and privileges of the user to be modified, use the db.getUser() and db.getRole() methods.

For example, to view roles for reportsUser created in Additional Examples, issue:

use reporting
db.getUser("reportsUser")

To display the privileges granted to the user by the readWrite role on the "accounts" database, issue:

use accounts
db.getRole( "readWrite", { showPrivileges: true } )
3

Identify the privileges to grant or revoke.

If the user requires additional privileges, grant to the user the role, or roles, with the required set of privileges. If such a role does not exist, create a new role with the appropriate set of privileges.

To revoke a subset of privileges provided by an existing role: revoke the original role and grant a role that contains only the required privileges. You may need to create a new role if a role does not exist.

4

Modify the user's access.

Revoke a Role

Revoke a role with the db.revokeRolesFromUser() method. The following example operation removes the readWrite role on the accounts database from the reportsUser:

use reporting
db.revokeRolesFromUser(
    "reportsUser",
    [
      { role: "readWrite", db: "accounts" }
    ]
)
Grant a Role

Grant a role using the db.grantRolesToUser() method. For example, the following operation grants the reportsUser user the read role on the accounts database:

use reporting
db.grantRolesToUser(
    "reportsUser",
    [
      { role: "read", db: "accounts" }
    ]
)

For sharded clusters, the changes to the user are instant on the mongos on which the command runs. However, for other mongos instances in the cluster, the user cache may wait up to 10 minutes to refresh. See userCacheInvalidationIntervalSecs.

Modify the Password for an Existing User

Note

To modify an existing MongoDB Atlas user's password, see Modify Database Users in the MongoDB Atlas documentation.

Prerequisites

To modify the password of another user on a database, you must have the changePassword action on that database.

Procedure

1

Connect to MongoDB with the appropriate privileges.

Connect to the mongod or mongos with the privileges specified in the Prerequisites section.

The following procedure uses the myUserAdmin created in Enable Access Control on Self-Managed Deployments.

mongosh --port 27017 -u myUserAdmin -p 'abc123' --authenticationDatabase 'admin'
2

Change the password.

Pass the user's username and the new password to the db.changeUserPassword() method.

The following operation changes the reporting user's password to SOh3TbYhxuLiW8ypJPxmt1oOfL:

db.changeUserPassword("reporting", "SOh3TbYhxuLiW8ypJPxmt1oOfL")

Tip

See also:

Change Your Password and Custom Data on Self-Managed Deployments

View a User's Roles

Note

To view a user's roles in MongoDB Atlas, see View Database Users and Certificates in the MongoDB Atlas documentation.

Prerequisites

To view another user's information, you must have the viewUser action on the other user's database.

Users can view their own information.

Procedure

1

Connect to MongoDB with the appropriate privileges.

Connect to mongod or mongos as a user with the privileges specified in the prerequisite section.

The following procedure uses the myUserAdmin created in Enable Access Control on Self-Managed Deployments.

mongosh --port 27017 -u myUserAdmin -p 'abc123' --authenticationDatabase 'admin'
2

Identify the user's roles.

Use the usersInfo command or db.getUser() method to display user information.

For example, to view roles for reportsUser created in Additional Examples, issue:

use reporting
db.getUser("reportsUser")

In the returned document, the roles field displays all roles for reportsUser:

...
"roles" : [
   { "role" : "readWrite", "db" : "accounts" },
   { "role" : "read", "db" : "reporting" },
   { "role" : "read", "db" : "products" },
   { "role" : "read", "db" : "sales" }
]

View a Role's Privileges

Note

To view a role's privileges in MongoDB Atlas, see View Custom Roles in the MongoDB Atlas documentation.

Prerequisites

To view a role's information, you must be either explicitly granted the role or must have the viewRole action on the role's database.

Procedure

1

Connect to MongoDB with the appropriate privileges.

Connect to mongod or mongos as a user with the privileges specified in the prerequisite section.

The following procedure uses the myUserAdmin created in Enable Access Control on Self-Managed Deployments.

mongosh --port 27017 -u myUserAdmin -p 'abc123' --authenticationDatabase 'admin'
2

Identify the privileges granted by a role.

For a given role, use the db.getRole() method, or the rolesInfo command, with the showPrivileges option:

For example, to view the privileges granted by read role on the products database, use the following operation, issue:

use products
db.getRole( "read", { showPrivileges: true } )

In the returned document, the privileges and inheritedPrivileges arrays. The privileges lists the privileges directly specified by the role and excludes those privileges inherited from other roles. The inheritedPrivileges lists all privileges granted by this role, both directly specified and inherited. If the role does not inherit from other roles, the two fields are the same.

...
"privileges" : [
  {
    "resource": { "db" : "products", "collection" : "" },
    "actions": [ "collStats","dbHash","dbStats","find","killCursors","planCacheRead" ]
  },
  {
    "resource" : { "db" : "products", "collection" : "system.js" },
    "actions": [ "collStats","dbHash","dbStats","find","killCursors","planCacheRead" ]
  }
],
"inheritedPrivileges" : [
  {
    "resource": { "db" : "products", "collection" : "" },
    "actions": [ "collStats","dbHash","dbStats","find","killCursors","planCacheRead" ]
  },
  {
    "resource" : { "db" : "products", "collection" : "system.js" },
    "actions": [ "collStats","dbHash","dbStats","find","killCursors","planCacheRead" ]
  }
]

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