Homelab Rebuild Part 19: Logging In to OpenBao with Cloudflare Access and Google

| October 14, 2026 | 7 min to read

Intro

Since Part 5, the only way into OpenBao was the root token: a credential with unlimited power and no expiry, copied from a file on my laptop whenever I needed to read a secret. That is fine for bootstrapping (the first setup of a new system) and bad for daily use.

I already pay for Cloudflare, and Cloudflare Access can act as an OIDC provider for any application. So the plan was: OpenBao trusts Cloudflare Access, Cloudflare Access trusts Google, and only my Gmail address gets in.

TL;DR: Cloudflare Access “SaaS application” (OIDC) in front, Google as the login method, and OpenBao’s oidc auth method with one role bound to my email. Logins give a 1-hour admin token (8 hours max), in the web UI and the CLI. The root token is now break-glass only (for emergencies). The one surprise was my own setup script talking plain HTTP to a TLS-only OpenBao.

The Situation

OpenBao 2.7.1: three pods with Raft, TLS from my lab CA, UI and API reachable only over Tailscale (https://openbao.<tailnet>.ts.net)
Auth methods before: kubernetes (for External Secrets) and the root token
Cloudflare Zero Trust team <team>.cloudflareaccess.com
Tetragon watches outbound connections from the openbao namespace (Part 11) and alerts on anything outside the cluster and LAN (Part 17)

Setup

The chain of trust

browser or bao CLI
  -> OpenBao (auth/oidc, role admin)
     -> Cloudflare Access (SaaS app "OpenBao", OIDC)
        -> Google (identity provider, my Google account's 2FA)

OpenBao never talks to Google. It only trusts Cloudflare’s ID token and checks one claim: email.

In Google Cloud I created an OAuth client of type Web application, with the consent screen in Testing mode and my Gmail as the only test user. Its redirect URI is Cloudflare’s callback:

https://<team>.cloudflareaccess.com/cdn-cgi/access/callback

Cloudflare moved its menus after most guides were written. Identity providers are now under Zero Trust > Integrations > Identity providers, not under Settings. The Test button showed the exact identity that OpenBao sees later:

{
  "name": "Frans Caisar Ramadhan",
  "email": "<my gmail>"
}

The OpenBao app in Cloudflare Access

Under Access controls > Applications > SaaS application, with protocol OIDC:

Setting	Value
Redirect URLs	`https://openbao.<tailnet>.ts.net/ui/vault/auth/oidc/oidc/callback` and `http://localhost:8250/oidc/callback`
Scopes	`openid`, `email`, `profile`
PKCE	off (OpenBao uses the client secret)
Identity providers	Google only
Policy	Allow, include one email address

The first redirect URL is for the web UI. The second is where the bao CLI listens during bao login.

The OpenBao side, as a script

I wanted this to be reproducible, so it is a script in the repo, oidc.sh. It writes an admin policy, enables auth/oidc, and creates the role. The root token and the client secret come in on stdin, so neither ends up in shell history or process arguments:

{ jq -r .root_token ~/.config/openbao/init-lab.json; pbpaste; } \
  | kubectl -n openbao exec -i openbao-0 -c openbao -- sh -c "$(cat kubernetes/apps/openbao/oidc.sh)" oidc \
      "https://<team>.cloudflareaccess.com/cdn-cgi/access/sso/oidc/<client-id>" "<client-id>" \
      "<my gmail>" "openbao.<tailnet>.ts.net"

I wrote the role as a JSON body. I did not trust the CLI to parse a map like bound_claims from a plain key=value string:

{
  "role_type": "oidc",
  "user_claim": "email",
  "bound_claims": {"email": ["<my gmail>"]},
  "oidc_scopes": ["openid", "email", "profile"],
  "allowed_redirect_uris": [
    "https://openbao.<tailnet>.ts.net/ui/vault/auth/oidc/oidc/callback",
    "http://localhost:8250/oidc/callback"
  ],
  "token_policies": ["admin"],
  "token_ttl": "1h",
  "token_max_ttl": "8h"
}

Before the script read the clipboard, I checked what was on it without printing it: 64 characters, no whitespace, and not equal to the client ID. The Access app and Google each have a client secret, and pasting the wrong one is an easy mistake.

Letting OpenBao reach Cloudflare

OpenBao fetches Cloudflare’s discovery document and signing keys, and exchanges the login code for a token. Those are outbound connections from openbao to the internet. Tetragon’s unexpected-egress policy reports exactly that kind of connection. I added Cloudflare’s published IPv4 ranges (from api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/ips) to that namespace’s allow list, and nowhere else. After setup, Tetragon exported zero events from openbao.

Issue 1: My own script spoke HTTP to a TLS-only server

Symptom

The first run stopped at its first command:

Error uploading policy: Error making API request.
URL: PUT http://127.0.0.1:8200/v1/sys/policies/acl/admin
Code: 400. Raw Message:
Client sent an HTTP request to an HTTPS server.

Nothing changed yet, because the policy write was the first step.

Cause

I copied the script’s header from the older bootstrap.sh. That script sets BAO_ADDR=http://127.0.0.1:8200. That was true before OpenBao got TLS. The pods already carry the right values:

BAO_ADDR=https://127.0.0.1:8200
BAO_CACERT=/openbao/userconfig/openbao-tls/ca.crt

Fix

Remove the override from both scripts and use the pod’s environment. The second run went through:

Success! Uploaded policy: admin
Success! Enabled oidc auth method at: oidc/
oidc ready: role admin for <my gmail>

OpenBao validates the discovery URL when it saves the configuration. So this also proved that OpenBao can reach Cloudflare.

Result

Web UI: Method OIDC, a popup to Cloudflare Access, Google sign-in, and back into OpenBao. OpenBao recorded an identity alias for my email on the oidc mount.

CLI: bao 2.7.1 (the server’s version) now comes from the repo’s mise.toml. With -no-store, nothing goes to disk. I printed only the token’s metadata:

BAO_ADDR=https://openbao.<tailnet>.ts.net bao login -method=oidc -no-store -format=json role=admin
# policies: ['admin', 'default'] | ttl: 3600 s | renewable: True

	Before	After
Daily login	root token from a file	Google, through Cloudflare Access
Token lifetime	no expiry	1 hour, 8 hours max
Who can log in	whoever has the file	one email address, checked by Cloudflare and again by OpenBao
Second factor	none	my Google account’s 2FA
Root token	daily use	break-glass

Lessons

An identity proxy can be an OIDC provider. Cloudflare Access sat in front of Google and gave OpenBao a standard OIDC issuer, with its own policy as a second check.
Bind the role to a claim, not only to a login. If someone loosens the Access policy, OpenBao’s bound_claims still accepts only one email.
Keep secrets out of arguments and chat. Clipboard to stdin, checked by length and shape, never printed.
Copied boilerplate carries old assumptions. One stale BAO_ADDR line from before TLS broke a new script. It was also wrong in the old one.
A new outbound dependency needs a runtime-policy change. Without the Cloudflare ranges, every login triggers a security alert.

What is left: moving the root token and recovery keys off my laptop into a password manager.

Series

This post is part of Homelab Rebuild: