kubectl user password manager glue

❗ An easy way to store your kubernetes credentials in a keychain or password manager

Does your ~/.kube/config look like this:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Config
users:
- name: my-prod-user
  user:
    token: <REAL TOKEN!>
- name: docker-desktop
  user:
    client-certificate-data: <REAL CERT!>
    client-key-data: <REAL PRIVATE KEY!>

😱 😱 😱 😱

Do you scold your parents 👨‍🏫/👩‍🏫 for maintaining a passwords.doc on their desktop?

Then you need kubectl-passman!

Works with (more coming)

Provider	Supports	Example command
keychain	Mac OS Keychain GNOME Keyring Windows Credential Manager	kubectl passman keychain [item] [token]
1password	1password requires 1password cli	kubectl passman 1password [item] [token]
gopass	gopass	kubectl passman gopass [item] [token]

Installation

# with krew (recommended)
kubectl krew install passman

# get a binary from https://github.com/chrisns/kubectl-passman/releases/latest
# place it in PATH and make sure it's called kubectl-passman

# use go to get the most recent
go install github.com/chrisns/kubectl-passman

Usage

You need to JSON encode the credentials so that should look something like:

{"token":"00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"}

or for a key pair:

{
  "clientCertificateData":"-----BEGIN REAL CERTIFICATE-----\nMIIC9DCCA.......-----END CERTIFICATE-----",
  "clientKeyData":"-----BEGIN REAL RSA PRIVATE KEY-----\nMIIE......-----END REAL RSA PRIVATE KEY-----"
}

or for a key pair from your kube config:

{
  "client-certificate-data":"LS0tLS1CRU...LS0tCg==",
  "client-key-data":"LS0tLS1CRU...LS0tLS0K"
}

If they are already in your kube config, you could retrieve them with something like:

kubectl config view --raw -o json | jq '.users[] | select(.name=="kubectl-prod-user") | .user' -c

Write it to the password manager

kubectl passman keychain kubectl-prod-user '[token]'
# or
kubectl passman 1password kubectl-prod-user '[token]'

## so should look like:
kubectl passman 1password kubectl-prod-user '{"token":"00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"}'
# or
kubectl passman 1password kubectl-prod-user '{"client-certificate-data":"...BASE64_ENCODE...","client-key-data":"...BASE64_ENCODE..."}'

Then add it to the ~/.kube/config:

kubectl config set-credentials \
  kubectl-prod-user \
 --exec-api-version=client.authentication.k8s.io/v1beta1 \
 --exec-command=kubectl-passman \
 --exec-arg=keychain \ # or 1password
 --exec-arg=kubectl-prod-user # name of [item-name] you used when you wrote to the password manager

Build

go build

Note: kubectl-passman will build slightly differently on Darwin (Mac OS) to other operation systems because it uses the go-keychain library that needs libraries that only exist on a mac so that it can natively talk to the keychain. When compiling for other operating systems you'll get go-keyring instead but I've abstracted to make the interactions the same.

Contributing

I ❤️ contributions, it'd be great if you could add support for your favourite password manager, work on something from the TODO or any open issues as a priority, but anything else that takes your fancy too is great, though best to raise an issue to discuss before investing time into it.