[PHOENIX-3686] De-couple PQS's use of Kerberos to talk to HBase and client authentication

• Type: New Feature
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 4.10.0
• Assignee: Josh Elser
• Reporter: Josh Elser
• Created: 17/Feb/17 19:32
• Updated: 01/Mar/17 01:10
• Resolved: 28/Feb/17 21:25

Description

Was trying to help a user that was using https://bitbucket.org/lalinsky/python-phoenixdb to talk to PQS. After upgrading Phoenix (to a version that actually included client authentication), their application suddenly broke and they were upset.

Because they were running Phoenix/HBase on a cluster with Kerberos authentication enabled, they suddenly "inherited" this client authentication. AFAIK, the python-phoenixdb project doesn't presently include the ability to authenticate via SPNEGO. This means a Phoenix upgrade broke their app which stinks.

This happens because, presently, when sees that HBase is configured for Kerberos auth (via hbase-site.xml), it assumes that clients should be required to also authenticate via Kerberos to it. In certain circumstances, users might not actually want to do this.

It's a pretty trivial change I've hacked together which shows that this is possible, and I think that, with adequate disclaimer/documentation about this property, it's OK to do. As long as we are very clear about what exactly this configuration property is doing (allowing anyone into your HBase instance as the PQS Kerberos user), it will unblock these users while the various client drivers build proper support for authentication.