Question
How to define encrypted environment variable - not application platform
- Posted on October 29, 2023
- Startup and founder stories
Asked by f48e9eb07e1d4255abdb1207654a6b
I have a droplet defined with Docker. I would like to define an environment variable (encrypted if possible). My docker-compose in the Postgres section uses commands such as - POSTGRES_USER=${POSTGRES_USER} The settings tab on the droplet has - what is it for = Service or API environment = staging. There is no setting option to add the environment variables. on my macBook I can set env variable using vi ~/.zshrc. If this cannot be done using the control panel is there a command line option to achieve this. Here is the section of the file .
The sql script defines the database name and schema used.
postgres:
image: postgres:15.4
_#command: postgres -c stats_temp_directory=/tmp_
restart: always
environment:
- POSTGRES_USER=${POSTGRES_USER}
- POSTGRES_PASSWORD=${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}
- POSTGRES_DB=${POSTGRES_DB}
- POSTGRES_MULTIPLE_EXTENSIONS=${POSTGRES_MULTIPLE_EXTENSIONS:-postgis,hstore,postgis_topology}
volumes:
- ./postgres-data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
- ./init.sql:/docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/init.sql
ports:
- 33066:5432
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I’m the creator of node’s dotenv. You can do this now with dotenvx
source
Hi there,
To use encrypted environment variables with Docker, you cannot directly encrypt the variable values inside the
docker-compose.ymlfile.Instead, you’d typically rely on external secrets management tools to store and retrieve the encrypted values, and then pass those values into your containers during runtime.
One option here would be HashiCorp Vault:
An alternative solution is to use something like
opensslto encrypt your variables, eg:This will return a base64 encoded encrypted value. You can then store the encrypted value anywhere safe, for example, in a
.envfile, in your version control (because it’s encrypted), or in any secrets management tool.After that you could decrypt the value as follows:
I would personally stick to a solution like the HashiCorp Vault though.
Hope that this helps!
Best,
Bobby