Why does LDAP authentication for Kong Manager fail with a “user not found” error?
Kong Manager’s LDAP auth fails with user not found when the kong_admin (or other) LDAP user doesn’t exist, or its DN falls outside the configured base_dn. A different, earlier error, Admin not found, means the corresponding Admin object was never created in Kong; create that first, then troubleshoot the LDAP-side lookup.
When logging in to Kong Manager as an LDAP user, authentication fails with the following error:
2025/04/14 20:23:42 [error] 26#0: *68309 [kong] access.lua:183 user not found, client: 172.19.0.1, server: kong_admin, request: "GET /auth HTTP/1.1", host: "localhost:8001", referrer: "http://localhost:8002/"An example of the full error messages is as follows;
2025/04/14 20:23:42 [debug] 26#0: *68309 [kong] access.lua:130 binding with cn=admin,dc=kong,dc=local and conf.ldap_password
2025/04/14 20:23:42 [debug] 26#0: *68309 [kong] access.lua:140 ldap bind successful, performing search request with base_dn:ou=users,dc=kong,dc=local, scope='sub', and filter=uid=kong_admin
2025/04/14 20:23:42 [debug] 26#0: *68309 [kong] access.lua:165 finding groups with member attribute: memberOf
2025/04/14 20:23:42 [error] 26#0: *68309 [kong] access.lua:183 user not found, client: 172.19.0.1, server: kong_admin, request: "GET /auth HTTP/1.1", host: "localhost:8001", referrer: "http://localhost:8002/"This indicated that kong_admin was not found in the LDAP server.
Check the following things;
Make sure the kong_admin user exists in your LDAP directory
Make sure the kong_admin user’s DN is under the sub-directory tree of base_dn
Note: there is an earlier prerequisite gate that produces a different symptom. If the username was never provisioned as a Kong Admin object, Kong logs “Admin not found” instead of “User not found” — a distinct, earlier error in the login flow than the one described above. If you see “Admin not found,” create the corresponding Admin object in Kong first, before troubleshooting the LDAP-side lookup.