Encrypt psft_customizations.yaml Passwords

Dan Iverson

In the psft_customizations.yaml file we store configuration information for a server, including passwords. There is a project, hiera-eyaml, that supports encrypting and decrypting sensitive data in Hiera YAML files.

Starting with PeopleTools 8.56, the DPK includes the the eyaml gem and has all of the configuration ready to go. These updated instructions (2/21/2020) will show you how to use eyaml with thepsft_customizations.yaml file. (Below I have left the original post with older instructions in case it helps anyone).

First, we need to set our EDITOR enviornment variable. I like VisualStudio Code, so here is how we set that up:

$env:EDITOR="code --wait"

Next, we need to move into the secure directory in the DPK folder:

cd c:\psft\dpk\puppet\secure

Now we can use eyaml to open our psft_customizations.yaml file and encrypt passwords:

eyaml edit ..\production\data\psft_customizations.yaml

Add New Passwords

To add a new password, you wrap the plain text password inside the brackets in this syntax: DEC::PKCS7[plaintextpassword]! For example,

db_user_pwd:     DEC::PKCS7[VP1]!

If you save and close the file, and open psft_customizations.yaml directly in VS Code, you will see the db_user_pwd: password is encrypted.

db_user_pwd:  ENC[PKCS7,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]

Excellent – we have encrypted passwords!

Edit Passwords

The next step is to edit existing encrypted passwords in the psft_customizations.yaml file. The eyaml edit command will open the file and decrypt passwords. The password syntax will be slightly different – it will have a number assigned to the password: db_user_pwd: DEC(1)::PKCS7[VP1]!

The (1) is used internally by eyaml, so don’t change it. But you can change the password inside the square brackets. After changing the password, save and close the file and your updated passwords will be encrypted.

Thats it! The DPK will know how to decrypt those passwords when you run it, and your configuration files now have encrypted passwords.

[Original Post]

Out of the box, the Windows-based DPK doesn’t work with hiera-eyaml. For Linux DPK, check out 2188771.1 – there is better support in the Linux DPK for hiera-eyaml.

In this post, we’ll walk through the steps to get hiera-eyaml working on Windows and how to encrypt data in the psft_customizations.yaml file.

Update RubyGems

The version of Ruby, and RubyGems, that ships with the DPK can’t install new Gems. The RubyGems version doesn’t support trust the site’s SSL certificate. To fix that, download the root certificate and tell RubyGems to trust it.

1. Download the newer SSL certificate.
2. Save the file as RubyGemsRootCA.pem
3. Copy the new certificate to C:\Program Files\Puppet Labs\Puppet\sys\ruby\lib\ruby\2.0.0\rubygems\ssl_certs

Copying the new certificate to ssl_certs will tell RubyGems to trust any certificate signed by it. Now we can use RubyGems to install hiera-eyaml on the server.

Install hiera-eyaml

When Puppet is installed, it includes Ruby and RubyGems binaries because Puppet is written in Ruby. We’ll use the gem utility to install the hiera-eyaml RubyGem. First, we should update PATH to include Puppet’s Ruby binaries:

1. $env:PATH += ";C:\Program Files\Puppet Labs\Puppet\sys\ruby\bin"
2. gem install hiera-eyaml

RubyGems will install any dependencies and report the progress.

Fetching: trollop-2.1.2.gem (100%)
Successfully installed trollop-2.1.2
Fetching: highline-1.6.21.gem (100%)
Successfully installed highline-1.6.21
Fetching: hiera-eyaml-2.1.0.gem (100%)
Successfully installed hiera-eyaml-2.1.0
Parsing documentation for trollop-2.1.2
Installing ri documentation for trollop-2.1.2
Parsing documentation for highline-1.6.21
Installing ri documentation for highline-1.6.21
Parsing documentation for hiera-eyaml-2.1.0
Installing ri documentation for hiera-eyaml-2.1.0
3 gems installed

Keys

Hiera-eyaml uses it’s own Public and Private keys to encrypt and decrypt data. If you have inspected the puppet\ssl directory, you will see folders for public and private keys. These keys are used by Puppet to communicate with a Puppet Server. We use different keys for encrypting data in psft_customizations.yaml.

The keys should be created in the folder C:\ProgramData\PuppetLabs\puppet\etc\secure\keys\. To ensure the keys are created in the correct location, Hiera-eyaml and Hiera know where they are, we’ll create a configuration file for Hiera-eyaml.

1. Create eyaml.yaml under C:\ProgramData\PuppetLabs\hiera\etc and add these values:

   ---    
   pkcs7_private_key: C:\ProgramData\PuppetLabs\puppet\etc\secure\keys\private_key.pkcs7.pem  
   pkcs7_public_key: C:\ProgramData\PuppetLabs\puppet\etc\secure\keys\public_key.pkcs7.pem
   

2. Set the EYAML_CONFIG environment variable:

   $env:EYAML_CONFIG="C:\ProgramData\PuppetLabs\hiera\etc\eyaml.yaml"
   

3. Create new encryption keys for Hiera-eyaml to use:

   eyaml createkeys
   

Keep these new keys safe and locked down; they decrypt your passwords!

Encrypt Passwords

Now that we have installed Hiera-eyaml and created keys, let’s do a quick test to make sure we can encrypt passwords. This test will encrypt the text “VP1”:

eyaml encrypt -s VP1

The output will look similar to this:

string: ENC[PKCS7,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]

OR

block: >
    ENC[PKCS7,MIIBeQYJKoZIhvcNAQcDoIIBajCCAWYCAQAxggEhMIIBHQIBADAFMAACAQEw
    DQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQAEggEALsKtTfAXyHyE/k5r2U2ZZU98SqaQ5/ukfNR/
    FkOt9bNhoZ1EomqmqIc/06l7Tk5W4BYJA0mXV6ykLgOHYTAJbVPM8gXBuHsw
    1jh+/VC0er7evlzqtf7UjIvu3rTo+0LUm2X3imjbWHGhyrs2bxm0L1qpC2at
    lTSzEYrSc6OxkTpZA19Y8iEJxFb+F0fGwsQ3SRVJD1J3Jwf0hAsHN/SXX/p2
    ywn5qz2BnlJl4wa7ragYv4aVBGbGF3ThvYMCTzNiFHtyHdCFvPX9i/t0fpDU
    JY76ndAl/T4q/Stopnq6Gm9vLJH5EC6KMUQZzb0ssDHriojQgUH7uFt8/Wn9
    vFeTQTA8BgkqhkiG9w0BBwEwHQYJYIZIAWUDBAEqBBBFcUOesdHoJgYi5PnX
    GmkAgBDbEJsr/tDXbDpJu7+xz9uL]

Hiera-eyaml gives two options for output: string and block. For psft_customizations.yaml I’m using the string output. It’s cleaner and easier to insert into the file. We can request string output only and assign a label to the encrypted password:

eyaml encrypt -s VP1 -o string -q -l db_user_pwd

The output should look like this:

db_user_pwd: ENC[PKCS7,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]

We can pass the output of this command into the clipboard and then paste the line directly into psft_customizations.yaml:

eyaml encrypt -s VP1 -o string -q -l db_user_pwd | set-clipboard

set-clipboard requires WMF 5.0

Edit YAML Files

Encrypting passwords on the command line is great, but what if you want to edit all of the passwords in your psft_customizations.yaml file at once? Hiera-eyaml has an edit command that will decrypt the passwords in psft_customizations.yaml and open the file in a text editor for you. First, we need to set the EDITOR environment variable:

1. $env:EDITOR="notepad.exe"
2. eyaml edit .\psft_customizations.yaml

Notepad will open the psft_customizations.yaml file. At the top of the file, you will see a large comment block explaining how to add and edit passwords. (The comment block will go away when you close Notepad.)

Add New Passwords

To add a new password, you wrap the plain text password inside the brackets in this syntax: DEC::PKCS7[plaintextpassword]! For example,

db_user_pwd:     DEC::PKCS7[VP1]!

If you save and close the file, and open psft_customizations.yaml directly in Notepad, you will see the db_user_pwd: password is encrypted.

db_user_pwd:  ENC[PKCS7,MIIBeQYJKoZIhvcNAQcDoIIBajCCAWYCAQAxggEhMIIBHQIBADAFMAACAQEwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQAEggEAdGWx7WeuGw3lULsdDANpYotX66B1wzO3U9H47RLJA+s4cIVg5z2JtzTp+uHOp9L9SdcNyzsvo6+uPY29DxMsaIUv9Dfa5LWKv+GZypH4myJYxbNfhtRE5TcLWxxwTSji9WYxDyFu8FFJGIkdNcEzN4svG6CknDhmA/od/NPanQg+xWbjP2qJkiOMi2fDwPJd11dev7Qm4NcwkZzdcsMBpkSgL3eL2dZ/BzdJndWrsGlYfUAy0TLxJD9a4aBCiwYoWWmmS4smnmtmti0R1DPEs8BpAl5L76JItMUwzRsnmu5IZ8odxn8rQZQNJaOVk/oScp4SRIgCh5+tYp7FMvgM/jA8BgkqhkiG9w0BBwEwHQYJYIZIAWUDBAEqBBCqrQ+GokeF23Of2odDkv5JgBBulnH4XkLOrQBEy+fa7cMr]

Excellent – we have encrypted passwords!

Edit Passwords

The next step is to edit existing encrypted passwords in the psft_customizations.yaml file. The eyaml edit command will open the file and decrypt passwords. The password syntax will be slightly different – it will have a number assigned to the password: db_user_pwd: DEC(1)::PKCS7[VP1]!

The (1) is used internally by Hiera-eyaml, so don’t change it. But you can change the password inside the square brackets. After changing the password, save and close the file and your updated passwords will be encrypted.

Enable eyaml with the DPK

When we push psft_customizations.yaml out to servers, we also need to ensure each server has the keys used to encrypt the passwords, and also knows about Hiera-eyaml. First, if you are using the encrypted passwords on more than one server, copy the puppet\etc\secure\keys folder to each server.

Next, Hiera needs to know that we are using Hiera-eyaml. In C:\ProgramData\PuppetLabs\hiera\etc\hiera.yaml, enable eyaml as a back-end format by adding - eyaml to the ;backends: section:

:backends:
    - yaml
    - eyaml

Verify that the :eyaml: section is at the bottom of hiera.yaml. Change the paths to the Public and Private keys. If you followed the steps above and created them in puppet\etc\secure\keys, the paths will look like this:

:eyaml:
    :datadir: C:\ProgramData\PuppetLabs\puppet\etc\data
    :extension: yaml

    :pkcs7_private_key: C:\ProgramData\PuppetLabs\puppet\etc\secure\keys\private_key.pkcs7.pem
    :pkcs7_public_key:  C:\ProgramData\PuppetLabs\puppet\etc\secure\keys\public_key.pkcs7.pem

Save hiera.yaml and let’s test our configuration.

Testing Hiera-eyaml

To test Hiera-eyaml and Puppet working together, we’ll encrypt the a password in psft_customizations.yaml and update UserPswd= value in psappsrv.cfg.

1. Open psft_customizations.yaml with eyaml edit and add the line:

   db_user_pwd: DEC::PKCS7[VP1]!
   

2. Save and close psft_customizations.yaml.

3. Save this code below as pwd.pp and save it to puppet\etc\manifests. Change the $configFile path to point to your psappsrv.cfg file.

   $configFile = 'C:/Users/vagrant/psft/pt/8.55/appserv/APPDOM/psappsrv.cfg' 
   ini_setting { "eyaml_test": 
       ensure => present, 
       path => $configFile, 
       section => 'Startup', 
       setting => 'UserPswd', 
       value => hiera('db_user_pwd'), 
   }
   

4. Change directories to puppet\etc\manifests.

5. Run puppet apply .\pwd.pp --trace --debug

6. After the run is done, open your psappsrv.cfg file. You should see UserPswd=VP1 in the file.

If the test above worked, you’re all set to use Hiera-eyaml with the DPK and Puppet. Once Hiera knows about Hiera-eyaml, any data in Hiera can be encrypted. Happy encrypting!

Note: This was originally posted by Dan Iverson and has been transferred from a previous platform. There may be missing comments, style issues, and possibly broken links. If you have questions or comments, please contact [email protected].