---
name: authentik-rp-sso-login-diagnosis
description: "Diagnose/repair a dead OAuth2 relying-party login against authentik (Grafana-style): authorize 500, missing email claim, Grafana /emails fallback. Live probe harness + ak-shell gotchas."
---

# Authentik OAuth2 relying-party (RP) SSO login diagnosis

Use when a vhost authenticates through authentik via the OIDC authorization-code
flow (Grafana, Seerr OIDC, any "Sign in with <authentik>" button) and the login
fails — even though the guard-chain e2e (Anubis + outpost) passes green.

## Key insight: the edge test lies

The outpost-guard spec (e.g. `13-sso`) only proves an authenticated session
reaches the app's *login page*. It never follows the RP OAuth button. So the RP
login can be 100% dead and the suite still passes. **Always drive the real RP
round-trip** to get ground truth (harness below).

## Symptom → cause map (all verified live on 2026-10-20, grafana)

| Signature | Root cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Browser hits `…/application/o/authorize/?client_id=…` → "Server Error — Powered by authentik" (500), traceback `AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'slug'` in `flows/planner.py` | provider `authorization_flow` is NULL (raw `ak shell` `create()` leaves it unset) | set `authorization_flow = default-provider-authorization-implicit-consent` |
| Grafana log `logger=oauth.generic_oauth level=error msg="Error getting email address" url=<api_url>/emails … 404/403` | the granted scope mapping returns a **bare string**, not a dict → no `email` claim emitted | fix the ScopeMapping expression to `return {"email": user.email, "email_verified": True}` |
| authorize 500 on scope-overlap, log `Application requested scopes not configured` for a scope like `user:email` | client requested a scope authentik doesn't define (GitLab-ism) | client must request authentik's real scopes: `openid email profile` |
| Grafana `?api=1` on API URL → GET `<…>/userinfo/?api=1/emails` → 403 | Grafana v13 appends `/emails` to a `?api=1` URL | use the standard `…/userinfo/` with **no `?api=1`** |

Crucial causal note: **Grafana v13 GETs `<api_url>/emails` for the address ONLY
when the token carries no `email` claim.** So the `/emails` 404 is a *symptom of
the missing claim*, not a Grafana misconfig. Do NOT chase it with `USE_ID_TOKEN`
or attribute paths; fix the claim. `USE_ID_TOKEN=true` does NOT stop the
`/emails` fetch. Once the claim exists, standard userinfo carries `email` and no
`USE_ID_TOKEN` is needed.

## Live RP-login probe harness (ground truth)

A `qa-e2e` authentik session storage state exists at
`tests/e2e/.auth/qa-e2e.json` after an e2e run; the e2e node_modules live in the
main checkout (`tests/e2e/`). Throwaway probe:

```js
// node _p.cjs  (run from a checkout with node_modules + .auth)
const { chromium } = require('playwright');
(async () => {
  const b = await chromium.launch({ headless: true });
  const ctx = await b.newContext({ storageState: '.auth/qa-e2e.json',
    userAgent: "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/139.0.0.0 Safari/537.36" });
  const p = await ctx.newPage();
  await p.goto('https://<vhost>/', { waitUntil: 'domcontentloaded' });
  for (let i=0;i<30;i++){ const t=await p.locator('body').innerText().catch(()=>''); if(!t.includes('not a bot')) break; await p.waitForTimeout(3000);}
  await p.goto('https://<vhost>/login/generic_oauth', { waitUntil: 'domcontentloaded' });
  await p.waitForTimeout(9000);
  const r = await ctx.request.get('https://<vhost>/api/user');
  console.log(p.url(), r.status(), (await r.text()).slice(0,200));
  await b.close();
})();
```

Success = final URL on the app host (not `/login`) AND `/api/user` 200 with an
email. Before the fix it is `/login` + 401. Move the throwaway to
`~/.AGENTTRASH/…` after (never `rm`).

## ak-shell census: operational traps (authentik 2026.8)

- **Run it via `ssh dankclaw bash -s <<'EOF' … EOF`, NEVER direct
  `ssh host '… "{{…}}"'`.** Direct ssh eats inner quotes locally; `podman inspect
  --format '{{…}}'` and multi-line `ak shell -c "…"` only survive inside a quoted
  heredoc. Authentik runs **rootless** (`podman exec authentik-server …`, no sudo).
- `OAuth2Provider` has **no `properties` attribute** in 2026.8; scopes are derived
  from `p.property_mappings`. Accessing `.properties` raises and silently aborts
  the whole `-c` payload.
- `ScopeMapping` is **not importable** from `authentik.core.models`. To read
  scopes: iterate `p.property_mappings.all()`, then `m.scopemapping.scope_name`
  (reverse one-to-one; the base `PropertyMapping` row has no `scope_name`).
- Introspect before guessing: `[f.name for f in Model._meta.get_fields()]`. Don't
  trial-and-error attribute names — that wastes turns.
- Claims-into-id_token field is `include_claims_in_id_token`.
- Provider census that works:
```
from authentik.providers.oauth2.models import OAuth2Provider
for p in OAuth2Provider.objects.all():
    af=p.authorization_flow
    print(p.name, af.slug if af else None)
# email mapping shape (the real bug):
p=OAuth2Provider.objects.filter(name='grafana').first()
for m in p.property_mappings.all():
    print(m.name, getattr(getattr(m,'scopemapping',None),'scope_name',None), repr(getattr(m,'expression','')))
```

## Repair = idempotent script (DB state, not deployable)

Authentik config lives in its DB, not in any repo file; a blueprint re-import or
an `ak shell` re-creation reverts provider fields silently. Ship an idempotent
`scripts/authentik-<svc>-sso-fix.sh` that `ssh HOST 'podman exec -i
authentik-server ak shell' <<'PYEOF' … PYEOF` and re-applies each fact guarded by
"already set?" checks. Match the style of
`scripts/authentik-set-login-session-duration.sh`; add a header note "DB state —
re-run after a rebuild". Reference it from the service page. Grafana's half
(env) lives in `grafana.container` and deploys normally.

## Repo test-seam gotchas this triggers

- **literal-secret seam** (`observability_quadlet.bats`, "no literal secret")
  globs keys `*_SECRET|*_PASSWORD|*_TOKEN|*_API_KEY` and demands a `${VAR}`
  value. A boolean env ending in `_TOKEN` (`…_USE_ID_TOKEN=true`) is a **false
  positive**. Prefer not to set such a key (drop `USE_ID_TOKEN`); otherwise the
  seam must be refined (ask the owner before editing a pre-existing test).
- Quadlet `Environment=` **word-splits on spaces** (systemd semantics) — a spaced
  list must be quoted: `Environment="KEY=a b c"`, else it truncates to `a`. The
  repo already uses this (`open-webui.container` OAUTH_SCOPES).
- **OKF conformance gate** rejects a page frontmatter `timestamp` in the future.
  The fleet host clock reads UTC (often a day ahead of local "today") — set the
  timestamp to the repo's today, not the host's UTC date.