Application secrets
This page is a development guide for application secrets.
Secret entries
| Entry | Description |
|---|---|
secret_key_base |
The base key to be used for generating a various secrets |
otp_key_base |
The base key for One Time Passwords, described in User management |
db_key_base |
The base key to encrypt the data for attr_encrypted columns |
openid_connect_signing_key |
The signing key for OpenID Connect |
encrypted_settings_key_base |
The base key to encrypt settings files with |
Where the secrets are stored
| Installation type | Location |
|---|---|
| Linux package | /etc/gitlab/gitlab-secrets.json |
| Cloud Native GitLab Charts | Kubernetes Secrets |
| Self-compiled |
<path-to-gitlab-rails>/config/secrets.yml (Automatically generated by 01_secret_token.rb) |
Warning: Before you add a new secret to application secrets
Before you add a new secret to config/initializers/01_secret_token.rb,
make sure you also update Omnibus GitLab or updates fail. Omnibus is responsible for writing the secrets.yml file.
If Omnibus doesn't know about a secret, Rails attempts to write to the file, but this fails because Rails doesn't have write access.
The same rules apply to Cloud Native GitLab charts, you must update the charts at first.
In case you need the secret to have same value on each node (which is usually the case) you need to make sure it's configured for all
GitLab.com environments prior to changing this file.
Examples
- Change for self-compiled installation
- Change for Linux package installation
- Change for Linux package installation
- Change for Cloud Native installation
Further iteration
We may either deprecate or remove this automatic secret generation 01_secret_token.rb in the future.
See issue 222690 for more information.