info
Prerequisites - before you begin, please ensure:
Overview
The IonFS CLI provides a set of tools to manage secrets stored in IBC NKV as if it were a remote filesystem. While the secrets are stored within IBC NKV, the metadata is stored in a customer-controlled metadata repository.
Anyone that has been granted access to this repository, and the appropriate Ionburst Cloud Platform credentials, can interact with the stored secrets.
To get up and running quickly, we will be using the newly released IonFS CLI local metadata repository functionality.
Shared Responsibility Model Breakdown
Customer Responsibility
- You, the customer, are responsible for the secure management of the Ionburst Cloud credentials used by
ionfs. - You, the customer, are responsible for the security of
ionfsmetadata repositories and the metadata stored in them.
Ionburst Cloud Responsibility
- We are responsible for the security of all secrets stored in IBC NKV using
ionfs. - We are responsible for the underlying security and availability of the Ionburst Cloud platform.
Getting Started
In this tutorial we will cover:
Setting up
ionfs.Working with
ionfsmetadata repositories.Listing IBC classifications with
ionfs.Working with
ionfsdirectories.Managing secrets with
ionfs.Basic Usage
ionfs allows us to do the following:
- List configured metadata repositories.
- List available IBC classifications.
- Create, list and delete
ionfsdirectories. - Upload, download and delete secrets from IBC NKV.
1. Setting up
ionfs makes use of metadata repositories, or repos, to track the secrets that have been secured by IBC NKV. Metadata repos are specified in the configuration file stored under ~/.ionfs/appsettings.json.
For this tutorial, we are going to create a new local directory to use for ionfs metadata, along with the ~/.ionfs directory used to store our configuration file.
We can now set up our ionfs configuration file. First, add a new file to our newly created .ionfs directory.
For MacOS and Linux users:
For Windows users:
Open this file in your text editor of choice, and add the following:
Key points to note:
- setting the
Usageentry to secrets is required to configure the repo for IBC NKV. - the
DataStoreentry references the local directory we've created for metadata (remember to change the username), but it cannot use relative paths, i.e:- for MacOS:
/Users/username/local-ionfs - for Linux:
/home/username/local-ionfs - for Windows:
/
- for MacOS:
- the
Ionburstsection relates to the Ionburst SDK credentials file. If you have an existing profile, you can add it here.
If you do not have an existing Ionburst credentials file, one can be created with the following:
For MacOS and Linux users:
For Windows users:
Open this file in your text editor of choice, and add the following (remember to add your Ionburst Cloud API credentials here):
2. Metadata Repos
Now that we have ionfs setup, we can now start working with our metadata repo. To list the configured repos, the following ionfs command can be used:
An example output would look like:
3. Classifications
Secrets can be secured by Ionburst Cloud according to available security policies. ionfs can be used to view the policies currently available to an Ionburst Cloud party.
To list available policies, the following can be used:
An example output would look like:
4. Directories
Secrets secured by IBC S6 through ionfs can be organised within a repo using a typical directory structure.
List directories
To list available directories within a repo, the following can be used:
As we marked the local-ionfs repo as the default, we can omit the name as it will be treated as the root.
An example output would look like:
By default, this will list the contents of the repo's root directory. To list a specific directory, the following can be used:
An example output would look like:
Create a directory
To create a new directory within a repo, the following can be used:
An example output would look like:
Delete a directory
To remove a directory within a repo, the following can be used:
An example output would look like:
5. Secrets
Finally, and most importantly we can now look at uploading (Put), downloading (Get) and deleting secrets from IBC NKV using ionfs. In these examples, we'll use a secret called my-secret, with the value "We may guard your data, but we'll never take its freedom".
First, we need to create my-file.txt:
Put
To upload a secret with ionfs, the following can be used:
An example output would look like:
To upload a secret to a specific directory within your repo, use the following:
An example output would look like:
Get
To retrieve a secret with ionfs, use the following:
An example output would look like:
Delete
To delete a secret from the ionfs repo and from Ionburst Cloud NKV, the following can be used:
An example output would look like:
Conclusion
You should now be able to perform basic secrets operations on IBC NKV with ionfs. If you're interested in learning more about the IonFS CLI, please see the Ionburst Cloud docs.