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Managing Vaults

Introduction​

Vaults in Polykey are secure containers where you can store and manage secrets like passwords, tokens, certificates, and keys. Vaults are encrypted and only accessible within your Polykey node. This section covers the basics of managing vaults, including creating, listing, deleting, viewing vault history, and renaming them.

Creating a Vault​

To create a new vault, use the following command:

polykey vaults create <vaultName>

Example​

Create a new vault named myvault:

polykey vaults create myvault

Example Output​

Vault zUvPxC9aKNw94E1yR9dffzY created successfully

Listing Vaults​

To see all the vaults you have, use the list command. This provides a simple way to view all vault names and their identifiers.

polykey vaults list

Example Output​

my-software-project	zD8XRJw2SoRoUW5e2mBR9tJ
myvault            	zD3cWJLBDEMWcbwNbjuUevo
myvault-101        	zErezdpLocYs1VRZPV3wcqS

Deleting a Vault​

If you need to remove a vault, you can delete it using the delete command:

polykey vaults delete <vaultName>

Example​

Delete the vault named myvault:

polykey vaults delete myvault

This operation does not produce output on successful execution, indicating the vault has been removed.

Viewing Vault History​

Each vault maintains a version history which tracks changes over time. Use the log command to view the history of commits to a vault.

polykey vaults log <vaultName>

Example​

View the log for my-software-project:

polykey vaults log my-software-project

Example Output​

commitId   b568873376cd74a6c58755f73d1068cbb52cbc84
committer  vgijtpv0h8m1eajeir77g73muq88n5kj0413t6fjdqsv9kt8dq4pg
timestamp  Tue May 14 2024 21:27:52 GMT-0600 (Mountain Daylight Time)
message    "AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY added\n"
commitId   4d664db1f90f4c03d6c72be0fba4d3d1a3e7bda0
committer  vgijtpv0h8m1eajeir77g73muq88n5kj0413t6fjdqsv9kt8dq4pg
timestamp  Tue May 14 2024 21:27:43 GMT-0600 (Mountain Daylight Time)
message    "AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID added\n"

Renaming a Vault​

To change the name of an existing vault, use the rename command. This allows you to update the vault's name to something more descriptive or appropriate.

polykey vaults rename <oldVaultName> <newVaultName>

Example​

Rename myvault-1 to myvault-101:

polykey vaults rename myvault-1 myvault-101

Confirm the rename by running:

polykey vaults list

Conclusion​

Managing vaults is a foundational skill in using Polykey effectively. This section has guided you through the essential commands needed to create, manage, and organize your vaults within Polykey. Further capabilities such as setting permissions, sharing vaults, and pulling vaults from other nodes will be covered in the Secrets Management section of our documentation. These basic functionalities ensure that your secrets are well-organized and secure within the network.

For a full list of vault commands and options, run:

polykey vaults -h