6. Managing Secrets with Ansible Vault

In this lab we are going to practice encryption in Ansible playbooks. It assumes your working directory is always /home/ansible/techlab/.

Task 1

Create a simple playbook called secretservice.yml which creates a file MI6 in the /etc/ directory on node1 and node2. Use the template module and a template named mi6.j2. Don’t encrypt anything yet and use the inventory hosts from the earlier labs.

The content of the file MI6 should be:

  username: jamesbond
  password: miss_moneypenny

Run the playbook and check if the file /etc/MI6 has been deployed on the nodes.

Solution Task 1

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$ cat mi6.j2
username: jamesbond
password: miss_moneypenny

$ cat secretservice.yml
---
- hosts: node1, node2
  become: true
  tasks:
    - name: put template
      template:
        src: mi6.j2
        dest: /etc/MI6

$ ansible-playbook secretservice.yml
$ ansible node1,node2 -a "cat /etc/MI6"  #<-- show created files with it's content

Task 2

Make the playbook secretservice.yml use a variable file named secret_vars.yml with the content:
```
  var_username: jamesbond
  var_password: miss_moneypenny
```
Rewrite the mi6.j2 template to use the variables from the secret_vars.yml file. Nothing is encrypted yet.
Rerun the playbook and remember nothing has been encrypted yet.

Solution Task 2

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$ cat secret_vars.yml
---
var_username: jamesbond
var_password: miss_moneypenny

$ cat mi6.j2
username: {{ var_username }}
password: {{ var_password }}

$ cat secretservice.yml
---
- hosts: node1, node2
  become: true
  vars_files:
    - secret_vars.yml
  tasks:
    - name: put template
      template:
        src: mi6.j2
        dest: /etc/MI6

$ ansible-playbook secretservice.yml

Task 3

Encrypt the secret_vars.yml file by using ansible-vault with the password goldfinger.

Tip

You don’t have to set a label when encrypting the file.

Rerun the playbook providing the password for decrypting secret_vars.yml at the command prompt.
Create a file named vaultpassword containing the unencrypted string “goldfinger”.
Rerun the playbook providing the password for decrypting secret_vars.yml from the file vaultpassword.

Tip

Since the password is in clear text in the file vaultpassword, you should never ever push it to a git repository or similar. Also double check that only the necessary permissions are set.

Solution Task 3

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$ cat vaultpassword
goldfinger

$ ansible-vault encrypt secret_vars.yml --vault-id vaultpassword

$ ansible-playbook secretservice.yml --ask-vault-pass

$ ansible-playbook secretservice.yml --vault-id vaultpassword

Task 4

Configure your environment to always use the vaultpassword file as the vault file.
Rerun the playbook without providing the password or the password file at the command line.

Solution Task 4

Make sure you recieve the following output in your terminal:

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$ grep ^vault /home/ansible/techlab/ansible.cfg
vault_password_file = /home/ansible/techlab/vaultpassword

$ ansible-playbook secretservice.yml

Task 5

Decrypt the file secret_vars.yml.
Encrypt the values of the variables username and password and put them into the secret_vars.yml file.

Note

Look for an option to ansible-vault to give the name of the variable while encrypting the value. This makes it easier to copy-paste the output later!

Solution Task 5

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ansible-vault decrypt secret_vars.yml
echo "---" > secret_vars.yml
ansible-vault encrypt_string jamesbond -n var_username >> secret_vars.yml
ansible-vault encrypt_string miss_moneypenny -n var_password >> secret_vars.yml

Content of secret_vars.yml

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---
var_username: !vault |
          $ANSIBLE_VAULT;1.1;AES256
          65336662623334393265373462616231323635623034653534393861666637333232383438393534
          3264376362633566313337333835313832376566343362330a636639346263323961636232306134
          35393462343935653031353430636666326232343565383330386339646436376265316264376366
          3336326566663033300a396666316461356336313564323236333138623465373439343032333930
          6664
var_password: !vault |
          $ANSIBLE_VAULT;1.1;AES256
          33366638383438373238333335663933323663326630356564626139323135306563343335613331
          6534373239393234366431656234386232373331316634660a646665303838636465303638316366
          63393034643639393764666634303338636130326164366339303634643264646235323637326661
          3633393039613263390a653062383834323661386661313733393662393935663263633565396133
          3931

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ansible-playbook secretservice.yml

Task 6

Remove the /etc/MI6 file on the nodes using an ad hoc command.

Solution Task 6

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ansible node1,node2 -i hosts -b -m file -a "path=/etc/MI6 state=absent"

Tip

Note that the command module is the default module and therefore has not to be specified here.

Task 7

Encrypt another file secret_vars2.yml. Ensure it is encrypted with your vault password file vaultpassword
Change the encryption of the file: encrypt it with another password provided at the command line.

Note

Don’t do this by decrypting & reencrypting but rather by using the rekey option. There’s a trap hidden here. Double check if everything worked as you expected.

Check the content of secret_vars2.yml by viewing it and providing the password at the command line.

Solution Task 7

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ansible-vault encrypt secret_vars2.yml

Be sure to use rekey with --new-vault-id. By using --vault-id, ansible-vault would use the value from vaultpasswordfile and not the one asked for by using @prompt. This could be quite misleading… You can check the same unexpected behavior when trying to view an encrypted file with providing a wrong password at command line. Giving a wrong password after ansible-vault view secret_vars2.yml --vault-id @prompt still results in showing the decrypted content of the file when ansible.cfg points to the correct vaultpasswordfile.

There is an open issue about this topic on github.

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ansible-vault rekey secret_vars2.yml --new-vault-id @prompt
ansible-vault view secret_vars2.yml --vault-id @prompt

Task 8

What can you do, to avoid Ansible to print out sensitive data at runtime?

Tip

Take a look at docs.ansible.com

Solution Task 8

Tip

See Ansible Docs: Logging and Ansible Docs: FAQ - How do I keep secret data in my playbook?

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no_log: true

All done?

Last modified November 20, 2023: Merge pull request #216 from puzzle/psc_edaserver_lab (d791dbe)