Creating an Admin

Several interactions with BOMnipotent require a user with admin rights. One of these is granting a new user admin rights. This means that some kind of bootstrapping mechanism is required.

Step 1: Create User

First, you will need to create a user account :

bomnipotent_client --domain=<server> user request <your-email>

bomnipotent_client -d <server> user request <your-email>

[INFO] Generating new key pair
[INFO] Storing secret key to "/home/simon/.config/bomnipotent/secret_key.pem" and public key to "/home/simon/.config/bomnipotent/public_key.pem"
[INFO] User request submitted. It now needs to be confirmed by a user manager.

To make things a litle less verbose, let’s store the domain of your server and your email address in a user session :

bomnipotent_client --domain=<server> --email=<your-email> session login

bomnipotent_client -d <server> -e <your-email> session login

[INFO] Storing session data in /home/simon/.config/bomnipotent/session.toml

Step 2: Mark User as TMP Admin

Due to security reasons, the user needs to already exist in the database at this point. Otherwise, a malicious actor could anticipate the email address you use for your admin, and make their own request at an opportune time. To prevent this, the tmp admin mechanism blocks all requests to newly add this particular user to the database.

Next, you will become the user manager that was mentioned in the server reply: Log onto your server machine, and in your server configuration file prepend

tmp_admin = "<your-email>"

It is important to add this line at the beginning of the file, otherwise BOMnipotent might try to interpret this field as part of another section.

Your server logs should now show that the configuration has been reloaded, in addition to the user request you made earlier.

docker logs bomnipotent_server

...
2025-03-06 11:30:15 +00:00 [INFO] Received POST request from 101.102.103.104 to https://bomnipotent.wwh-soft.com/user/info@wwh-soft.com
2025-03-06 11:32:56 +00:00 [INFO] Configuration successfully reloaded from "/etc/bomnipotent_server/configs/config.toml"
...

Step 3: Make User a full Admin

The server now treats authenticated requests from that user as if that user was an admin. To become a permanent admin, you first need to approve your user request. Back on the client, call

bomnipotent_client user approve <your-email>

[INFO] Changed status of info@wwh-soft.com to APPROVED

Now you can make yourself a full server admin:

bomnipotent_client user-role add <your-email> admin

[INFO] Added role to user

Step 4: Remove TMP Admin Mark

The stat of being a temporary admin is intended to be, well, temporary. The server logs a warning whenever you use temporary access rights:

docker logs bomnipotent_server -n 4

2025-03-06 14:51:35 +00:00 [INFO] Received POST request from info@wwh-soft.com to https://bomnipotent.wwh-soft.com/user/info@wwh-soft.com/roles
2025-03-06 14:51:35 +00:00 [WARN] Temporary admin functionality is enabled for info@wwh-soft.com
2025-03-06 14:51:35 +00:00 [INFO] User info@wwh-soft.com was authenticated as a temporary admin
2025-03-06 14:51:35 +00:00 [INFO] Temporary admin info@wwh-soft.com has permission USER_MANAGEMENT to perform this action

But now that you have successfully made yourself a permanent admin, you can and should remove the “tmp_admin” field from the configuration file again.

You are now ready to activate your subscription .