Authentication

Overview

When used with Artifactory, JFrog CLI offers several means of authentication: JFrog CLI does not support accessing Artifactory without authentication.

Authenticating with Username and Password / API Key

To authenticate yourself using your JFrog login credentials, either configure your credentials once using the jf c add command or provide the following option to each command.

Command option	Description
--url	JFrog Artifactory API endpoint URL. It usually ends with /artifactory
--user	JFrog username
--password	JFrog password or API key

For enhanced security, when JFrog CLI is configured to use a username and password / API key, it automatically generates an access token to authenticate with Artifactory. The generated access token is valid for one hour only. JFrog CLI automatically refreshed the token before it expires. The jf c add command allows disabling this functionality. This feature is currently not supported by commands which use external tools or package managers or work with JFrog Distribution.

Authenticating with an Access Token

To authenticate yourself using an Artifactory Access Token, either configure your Access Token once using the jf c add command or provide the following option to each command.

Command option	Description
--url	JFrog Artifactory API endpoint URL. It usually ends with /artifactory
--access-token	JFrog access token

Authenticating with RSA Keys

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Note

Currently, authentication with RSA keys is not supported when working with external package managers and build tools (Maven, Gradle, Npm, Docker, Go and NuGet) or with the cUrl integration.

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From version 4.4, Artifactory supports SSH authentication using RSA public and private keys. To authenticate yourself to Artifactory using RSA keys, execute the following instructions:

• Enable SSH authentication as described in Configuring SSH.

• Configure your Artifactory URL to have the following format: ssh://[host]:[port] There are two ways to do this:

  • For each command, use the --url command option.

  • Specify the Artifactory URL in the correct format using the jf c add command.

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  Warning Don't include your Artifactory context URL

  Make sure that the [host] component of the URL only includes the hostname or the IP, but not your Artifactory context URL.

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• Configure the path to your SSH key file. There are two ways to do this:

  • For each command, use the --ssh-key-path command option.

  • Specify the path using the jf c add command.

Authenticating using Client Certificates (mTLS)

From Artifactory release 7.38.4, you can authenticate users using a client certificate (mTLS). To do so will require a reverse proxy and some setup on the front reverse proxy (Nginx). Read about how to set this up here.

To authenticate with the proxy using a client certificate, either configure your certificate once using the jf c add command or use the --client-cert-path and--client-cert-ket-path command options with each command.

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Note

Authentication using client certificates (mTLS) is not supported by commands which integrate with package managers.

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Not Using a Public CA (Certificate Authority)?

This section is relevant for you if you're not using a public CA (Certificate Authority) to issue the SSL certificate used to connect to your Artifactory domain. You may not be using a public CA either because you're using self-signed certificates or you're running your own PKI services in-house (often by using a Microsoft CA).

In this case, you'll need to make those certificates available for JFrog CLI, by placing them inside the security/certs directory, which is under JFrog CLI's home directory. By default, the home directory is ~/.jfrog, but it can be also set using the JFROG_CLI_HOME_DIR environment variable.

Note

1. The supported certificate format is PEM.

2. Some commands support the --insecure-tls option, which skips the TLS certificates verification.

3. Before version 1.37.0, JFrog CLI expected the certificates to be located directly under the security directory. JFrog CLI will automatically move the certificates to the new directory when installing version 1.37.0 or above. Downgrading back to an older version requires replacing the configuration directory manually. You'll find a backup if the old configuration under .jfrog/backup