Deploying Authelia Open-Source Authentication and Authorization Gateway on Ubuntu 24.04

Authelia is an open-source authentication and authorization gateway that adds SSO, two-factor authentication, and policy-based access control in front of web applications, integrating natively with reverse proxies through forward-auth. This guide deploys Authelia using Docker Compose with Traefik handling automatic HTTPS, file-backed users, TOTP 2FA, and a sample whoami app protected by forward-auth. By the end, you'll have Authelia gating multiple subdomains with SSO and 2FA over HTTPS.

Set Up the Directory Structure

1. Create the project directory structure:

$ mkdir -p ~/authelia/{config,secrets,logs}

$ cd ~/authelia