libvirt: Secret information management
Description: libvirt, virtualization, virtualization API

# Secret information management

The secrets driver in libvirt provides a simple interface for storing and retrieving secret information.

## Connections to SECRET driver

The libvirt SECRET driver is a multi-instance driver, providing a single system wide privileged driver (the "system" instance), and per-user unprivileged drivers (the "session" instance). A connection to the secret driver is automatically available when opening a connection to one of the stateful primary hypervisor drivers. It is none the less also possible to explicitly open just the secret driver, using the URI protocol "secret" Some example connection URIs for the driver are:

    secret:///session                      (local access to per-user instance)
    secret+unix:///session                 (local access to per-user instance)

    secret:///system                       (local access to system instance)
    secret+unix:///system                  (local access to system instance)
    secret://example.com/system            (remote access, TLS/x509)
    secret+tcp://example.com/system        (remote access, SASl/Kerberos)
    secret+ssh://root@example.com/system   (remote access, SSH tunnelled)

### Embedded driver

Since 6.1.0 the secret driver has experimental support for operating in an embedded mode. In this scenario, rather than connecting to the libvirtd daemon, the secret driver runs in the client application process directly. To open the driver in embedded mode the app use the new URI path and specify a virtual root directory under which the driver will create content.

    secret:///embed?root=/some/dir

Under the specified root directory the following locations will be used

    /some/dir
      |
      +- etc
      |   |
      |   +- secrets
      |
      +- run
          |
          +- secrets

The application is responsible for recursively purging the contents of this directory tree once they no longer require a connection, though it can also be left intact for reuse when opening a future connection.

The range of functionality is intended to be on a par with that seen when using the traditional system or session libvirt connections to QEMU. Normal practice would be to open the secret driver in embedded mode any time one of the other drivers is opened in embedded mode so that the two drivers can interact in-process.

## Further reading

- Secret Encryption