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Jump to heading Passwords and secrets

You should not store any sensitive passwords in the fabfile. It's a possible security risk, as the file is part of your repository.

That's why phabalicious is heavily relying on key-forwarding for ssh-connections. If key-forwarding does not work, you might get a native ssh-password-prompt.

But sometimes it is unevitable to store atleast a reminder, that specific secrets are needed to get an application running or deploying.

Jump to heading Secrets

Phab 3.6 introduces a new way to handle secrets and passwords. The secrets are declared on a global scope via the secrets-key, and can be used via the new replacement-pattern %secret.SECRET_ID% in the host configuration or in scripts. The actual secrets can be provided via environment-variables, retrieved by the 1Password-cli or passed via the new command line option --secret ID=VALUE.

So end users get a nice UI asking politely for the passwords, but it can be automated for CI/CD usage very easily.

Jump to heading Declare secrets

Declare them in the fabfile at root-level, the usual mechanisms like inheriting from external sources is available. Secrets are superimposed questions described here.

An example:

secrets:
  registry-password:
    question: Please provide the registry password for user `bot@mu-registry.io`
  mysql-password:
    question: Please provide the Mysql password for the cluster
    env: DB_PASSWORD
    onePasswordId: 1234418718212s121
    onePasswordVaultId: 768131213124

You can reference the declared secrets in host-configs

scripts:
  test:
      - echo "the password for the registry is %secret.registry-password%"
hosts:
  hostA:
    ...
    database:
      pass: "%secret.mysql-password%"
      name: my_db
      ...

Phab will resolve the references on runtime and try to get the secret from

  • an uppercased environment variable e.g. REGISTRY_PASSWORD (You can set the name of the environment variable with env, see above example, DB_PASSWORD)

  • from the command line via the option --secret, e.g. --secret registry-password=123 --secret mysql-password=iamsecret

  • from the local password file (see below)

  • from the 1password cli if it is installed, and the secret declaration has a onePasswordId set. You need to be signed into 1password via the cli beforehand. (See the documentation)

  • If a onePasswordVaultId is set and a global config for onePassword is available, then phab will try to lookup the secret using 1password connect. (See below)

  • As a last resort, the user get prompted for the password.

Jump to heading Using 1Password CLI

Make sure that you have op up and running (see the documentation), and your secret has set an onePasswordId as in the following example:


secrets:
  mysql-password:
    question: Please provide the Mysql password for the cluster
    onePasswordId: 1234418718212s121

(You can get the id either by querying the database with op, or online via the web-ui).

  1. Log into 1password cli with eval (op signin <YOUR_TEAM_NAME>) (this is for the fish-shell, other shells might need a different syntax)
  2. Run your phab command.

If you are not logged in before phab needs the secret, the command will fail with an error message.

You can override the path to the op-executable by setting the environment variable PHAB_OP_FILE_PATH.

Jump to heading Using 1password connect

Make sure, you have a runnning 1password-connect-instance (See 1passwords documentation). Phab needs the api-endpoint and the token for the service to authenticate against it. Best practice is to store this data in an override-file either in your home-folder or up to 5 levels up from your project-folder. E.g. in ../../fabfile.local.override.yaml DO NOT COMMIT THE TOKEN INTO THE REPOSITORY

onePassword:
  default:
    endpoint: https://vault.your-domain.tld
    token: <your-jwt-token>
  client-a:
    endpoint: <Another endpoint>
    token:    <another JWT>

The jwt-token can also be passed via the environment variable PHAB_OP_JWT_TOKEN__<TOKEN_ID>, e.g. PHAB_OP_JWT_TOKEN__CLIENT_A. Then your secret needs to reference both the id and the vault-id as with this example:

secrets:
  mysql-password:
    question: Please provide the Mysql password for the cluster
    onePasswordId: 1234418718212s121
    onePasswordVaultId: 768131213124
    tokenId: client-a

Then just run your command as usual, phab will try to resolve the secret from 1password connect and use it.

Jump to heading FTP-passwords

Previous versions of phabalicious supported a different mechanism to store ftp credentials in a local file. The local file is still supported, but the automatic retrieval is deprecated, please use the approach outlined above.

If you are using the method ftp-sync you can add the password to the fabfile, but we strongly discourage this.

Jump to heading Local password storage

If you want to store the password permanently so that phabalicious can pick them up, store them in your user-folder in a file called .phabalicious-credentials. The format is as follows

"<user>@<scheme>://<host>:<port>": "<password>"
"stephan@localhost:21": 123456
mysql-password: iamsecret

If no password is available, phabalicious will prompt for one.