coder/docs/admin/users/github-auth.md

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GitHub

By default, new Coder deployments use a Coder-managed GitHub app to authenticate users. We provide it for convenience, allowing you to experiment with Coder without setting up your own GitHub OAuth app.

If you authenticate with it, you grant the control plane read access to your GitHub user email and other metadata listed during the authentication flow.

This access is necessary for the control plane to complete the authentication process. To the best of our knowledge, Coder, the company, does not gain access to this data by administering the GitHub app.

Default Configuration

Important

Installation of the default GitHub app grants Coder (the company) access to your organization's GitHub data.

For production environments, we strongly recommend that you configure your own GitHub OAuth app to ensure that your data is not shared with Coder (the company).

To use the default configuration:

1. Install the GitHub app in any GitHub organization that you want to use with Coder.

   The default GitHub app requires device flow to authenticate. This is enabled by default when using the default GitHub app. If you disable device flow using CODER_OAUTH2_GITHUB_DEVICE_FLOW=false, it will be ignored.

2. By default, only the admin user can sign up. To allow additional users to sign up with GitHub, add:

   CODER_OAUTH2_GITHUB_ALLOW_SIGNUPS=true
   

3. (Optional) If you want to limit sign-ups to specific GitHub organizations, set:

   CODER_OAUTH2_GITHUB_ALLOWED_ORGS="your-org"
   

Disable the Default GitHub App

You can disable the default GitHub app by configuring your own app or by adding the following environment variable to your control plane configuration:

CODER_OAUTH2_GITHUB_DEFAULT_PROVIDER_ENABLE=false

Note

After you disable the default GitHub provider, the Sign in with GitHub button might still appear on your login page even though the authentication flow is disabled.

To completely hide the GitHub sign-in button, you must disable the default provider and ensure you don't have a custom GitHub OAuth app configured.

Step 1: Configure the OAuth application in GitHub

1. Register a GitHub OAuth app.

2. GitHub will ask you for the following Coder parameters:

   • Homepage URL: Set to your Coder deployment's CODER_ACCESS_URL (e.g. https://coder.domain.com)

   • User Authorization Callback URL: Set to https://coder.domain.com

     If you want to allow multiple Coder deployments hosted on subdomains, such as coder1.domain.com, coder2.domain.com, to authenticate with the same GitHub OAuth app, then you can set User Authorization Callback URL to the https://domain.com

3. Take note of the Client ID and Client Secret generated by GitHub. You will use these values in the next step.

4. Coder needs permission to access user email addresses.

   Find the Account Permissions settings for your app and select read-only for Email addresses.

Step 2: Configure Coder with the OAuth credentials

The control plane reads these settings from environment variables. Set them wherever your deployment manages environment variables. For example, use Helm values.yaml for Kubernetes or /etc/coder.d/coder.env for a system service.

Kubernetes (Helm): set the variables under coder.env in your values.yaml:

coder:
  env:
    - name: CODER_OAUTH2_GITHUB_ALLOW_SIGNUPS
      value: "true"
    - name: CODER_OAUTH2_GITHUB_CLIENT_ID
      value: "533...des"
    - name: CODER_OAUTH2_GITHUB_CLIENT_SECRET
      value: "G0CSP...7qSM"
    # If setting allowed orgs, comment out CODER_OAUTH2_GITHUB_ALLOW_EVERYONE and its value
    - name: CODER_OAUTH2_GITHUB_ALLOWED_ORGS
      value: "your-org"
    # If allowing everyone, comment out CODER_OAUTH2_GITHUB_ALLOWED_ORGS and its value
    #- name: CODER_OAUTH2_GITHUB_ALLOW_EVERYONE
    #  value: "true"

Then apply the change with helm upgrade:

helm upgrade <release-name> coder-v2/coder -n <namespace> -f values.yaml

System service: add the variables to /etc/coder.d/coder.env:

CODER_OAUTH2_GITHUB_ALLOW_SIGNUPS=true
CODER_OAUTH2_GITHUB_ALLOWED_ORGS="your-org"
CODER_OAUTH2_GITHUB_CLIENT_ID="8d1...e05"
CODER_OAUTH2_GITHUB_CLIENT_SECRET="57ebc9...02c24c"

Then restart Coder with sudo service coder restart.

Tip

To allow everyone to sign up using GitHub, set:

CODER_OAUTH2_GITHUB_ALLOW_EVERYONE=true

For GitHub Enterprise support, also set CODER_OAUTH2_GITHUB_ENTERPRISE_BASE_URL.

Note

Every option above also has an equivalent CLI flag (for example, CODER_OAUTH2_GITHUB_CLIENT_ID becomes --oauth2-github-client-id). CLI flags are convenient for ad-hoc invocations of coder server during local development. For production deployments, prefer environment variables so the configuration lives with the container, Helm chart, or service unit that manages Coder. See the configuration reference for the full mapping between environment variables and flags.

We recommend requiring and auditing MFA usage for all users in your GitHub organizations. This can be enforced from the organization settings page in the Authentication security sidebar tab.

Device Flow

Coder supports device flow for GitHub OAuth. This is enabled by default for the default GitHub app and cannot be disabled for that app.

For your own custom GitHub OAuth app, you can enable device flow by setting:

CODER_OAUTH2_GITHUB_DEVICE_FLOW=true

Device flow is optional for custom GitHub OAuth apps. We generally recommend using the standard OAuth flow instead, as it is more convenient for end users.

Note

If you're using the default GitHub app, device flow is always enabled regardless of the CODER_OAUTH2_GITHUB_DEVICE_FLOW setting.