Detailed guides

How local secrets work

Here's a default project directory layout kept in a git repository:

~/Projects/
`-- data-center/
    |-- .git/
    `-- ansible/
        |-- inventory/
        |   |-- group_vars/
        |   |-- host_vars/
        |   `-- hosts
        |
        `-- secret/
            |-- credentials/
            `-- storage/

If you use the debops-padlock script to create encrypted EncFS storage for your secrets, directory layout will be slightly different:

~/Projects/
`-- data-center/
    |-- .git/
    `-- ansible/
        |-- .encfs.secret/        <- encrypted secrets
        |   |-- U8dfMgfgg48vj/
        |   |-- fk5fkg5NN/
        |   `-- padlock*          <- unlock/lock script
        |
        |-- inventory/
        |   |-- group_vars/
        |   |-- host_vars/
        |   `-- hosts
        |
        `-- secret/               <- plaintext secrets

While the project is "at rest", secrets are encrypted inside EncFS directory, and they don't show up in the secret/ directory. When you use the debops script to run the playbook, the padlock script unlocks the encrypted directory and secrets are available again in the secret/ directory for ansible-playbook to use.

How to use LDAP variables

DebOps relies on the ldap_attr and ldap_entry Ansible modules to perform LDAP management on local or remote LDAP servers. In various DebOps roles, they are used to perform certain tasks in a shared environment.

Some of the above tasks require admin privileges on the LDAP server. To provide access to it in a secure manner, debops.secret role keeps a set of variables meant to be used with these tasks.

For security reasons, LDAP-related tasks should be delegated to localhost (Ansible Controller) or the LDAP server itself. The host that runs these tasks requires python-ldap library. Modules will access LDAP directly, without using SSH redirection, so TLS encryption is strongly recommended. You should also take care to not log these tasks to avoid leaking the LDAP administrator password in logs.

Example usage of LDAP secret variables:

- name: Create an entry in LDAP database
  ldap_entry:
    dn:          '{{ secret__ldap_ou_people_dn }}'
    objectClass: [ 'organizationalUnit', 'top' ]
    state:       'present'
    server_uri:  '{{ secret__ldap_server_uri }}'
    start_tls:   '{{ secret__ldap_start_tls }}'
    bind_dn:     '{{ secret__ldap_bind_dn }}'
    bind_pw:     '{{ secret__ldap_bind_pw }}'
  become:        '{{ secret__ldap_become }}'
  delegate_to:   '{{ secret__ldap_delegate_to }}'
  no_log: '{{ secret__no_log | bool }}'

- name: Add attribute to an LDAP entry
  ldap_attr:
    dn:         'uid=user,{{ secret__ldap_ou_people_dn }}'
    name:       '{{ item.key }}'
    values:     '{{ item.value }}'
    state:      'exact'
    server_uri: '{{ secret__ldap_server_uri }}'
    start_tls:  '{{ secret__ldap_start_tls }}'
    bind_dn:    '{{ secret__ldap_bind_dn }}'
    bind_pw:    '{{ secret__ldap_bind_pw }}'
  become:       '{{ secret__ldap_become }}'
  delegate_to:  '{{ secret__ldap_delegate_to }}'
  with_dict:
    uid:          '{{ user_username }}'
    userPassword: '{{ user_password }}'
  no_log: '{{ secret__no_log | bool }}'

Of course for this to work, debops.secret needs to be included in the playbook, either as a role, or a role dependency. You can change the values of secret__ldap_* variables in inventory as you need.

If you use debops.slapd role to configure an LDAP server, it will automatically copy the admin account password to a location defined in secret__ldap_admin_password variable to be accessed by the debops.secret role as needed.