website/content/en/docs/tasks/configmap-secret/managing-secret-using-kubec...

157 lines
3.8 KiB
Markdown

---
title: Managing Secrets using kubectl
content_type: task
weight: 10
description: Creating Secret objects using kubectl command line.
---
<!-- overview -->
## {{% heading "prerequisites" %}}
{{< include "task-tutorial-prereqs.md" >}}
<!-- steps -->
## Create a Secret
A `Secret` can contain user credentials required by pods to access a database.
For example, a database connection string consists of a username and password.
You can store the username in a file `./username.txt` and the password in a
file `./password.txt` on your local machine.
```shell
echo -n 'admin' > ./username.txt
echo -n '1f2d1e2e67df' > ./password.txt
```
In these commands, the `-n` flag ensures that the generated files do not have
an extra newline character at the end of the text. This is important because
when `kubectl` reads a file and encodes the content into a base64 string, the
extra newline character gets encoded too.
The `kubectl create secret` command packages these files into a Secret and creates
the object on the API server.
```shell
kubectl create secret generic db-user-pass \
--from-file=./username.txt \
--from-file=./password.txt
```
The output is similar to:
```
secret/db-user-pass created
```
The default key name is the filename. You can optionally set the key name using
`--from-file=[key=]source`. For example:
```shell
kubectl create secret generic db-user-pass \
--from-file=username=./username.txt \
--from-file=password=./password.txt
```
You do not need to escape special characters in password strings that you
include in a file.
You can also provide Secret data using the `--from-literal=<key>=<value>` tag.
This tag can be specified more than once to provide multiple key-value pairs.
Note that special characters such as `$`, `\`, `*`, `=`, and `!` will be
interpreted by your [shell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_(computing))
and require escaping.
In most shells, the easiest way to escape the password is to surround it with
single quotes (`'`). For example, if your password is `S!B\*d$zDsb=`,
run the following command:
```shell
kubectl create secret generic dev-db-secret \
--from-literal=username=devuser \
--from-literal=password='S!B\*d$zDsb='
```
## Verify the Secret
Check that the Secret was created:
```shell
kubectl get secrets
```
The output is similar to:
```
NAME TYPE DATA AGE
db-user-pass Opaque 2 51s
```
You can view a description of the `Secret`:
```shell
kubectl describe secrets/db-user-pass
```
The output is similar to:
```
Name: db-user-pass
Namespace: default
Labels: <none>
Annotations: <none>
Type: Opaque
Data
====
password: 12 bytes
username: 5 bytes
```
The commands `kubectl get` and `kubectl describe` avoid showing the contents
of a `Secret` by default. This is to protect the `Secret` from being exposed
accidentally, or from being stored in a terminal log.
## Decoding the Secret {#decoding-secret}
To view the contents of the Secret you created, run the following command:
```shell
kubectl get secret db-user-pass -o jsonpath='{.data}'
```
The output is similar to:
```json
{"password":"MWYyZDFlMmU2N2Rm","username":"YWRtaW4="}
```
Now you can decode the `password` data:
```shell
echo 'MWYyZDFlMmU2N2Rm' | base64 --decode
```
The output is similar to:
```
1f2d1e2e67df
```
## Clean Up
Delete the Secret you created:
```shell
kubectl delete secret db-user-pass
```
<!-- discussion -->
## {{% heading "whatsnext" %}}
- Read more about the [Secret concept](/docs/concepts/configuration/secret/)
- Learn how to [manage Secrets using config files](/docs/tasks/configmap-secret/managing-secret-using-config-file/)
- Learn how to [manage Secrets using kustomize](/docs/tasks/configmap-secret/managing-secret-using-kustomize/)