How to write secured env variables into file inside docker image in pipelines?

[Ron Peled]

I'm trying to build a pipeline to deploy our serverless architecture. Ideally I can right into a local .env file including all several secured environment variables. I'm assuming the entire docker image is flushed after the pipeline is done deploying so this is really not a security concern. 

However, when I try to write into the file, all env vars write ok except the secured ones. Any idea how to make this work? 

script:

# setup local .env file
- touch .env
- echo "DEV_DB_DATABASE=$DEV_DB_DATABASE" >> .env
- echo "DEV_DB_USERNAME=$DEV_DB_USERNAME" >> .env
- echo "DEV_DB_PASSWORD=$DEV_DB_PASSWORD" >> .env
- echo "DEV_DB_HOST=$DEV_DB_HOST" >> .env
- echo "DB_LOGGING=true" >> .env
- echo "SLS_DEBUG=*" >> .env

Where ```$DEV_DB_PASSWORD``` is a secured variable. 

Thank you!

[Ron Peled · Accepted solution]

Oh Yes. No errors. What actually happens is all the normal environment variables gets written as expected. The secured ones translate into the string itself,

so this line:

DEV_DB_DATABASE=$DEV_DB_DATABASE

will show as the following line:

DEV_DB_DATABASE=<name of the db from the env var>

BUT this line:

DEV_DB_PASSWORD=$DEV_DB_PASSWORD

will result in the following line literally:

DEV_DB_PASSWORD=$DEV_DB_PASSWORD

I'm assuming this is some sort of a security mechanism to not 'log' the secured vars but I wonder if there's a way around it or if I'm just doing something wrong. Ideally we actually write the value of the secured vars into the same file so we can then use it in our deploys.

Thanks!

[Philip Hodder]

How are you verifying the contents of the file? If you're running "$ cat .env" (or something similar) within Pipelines, then we will be masking the variable when it is printing from the file. But it should still be in the file as the correct value.

I've tested out a similar example here:

https://bitbucket.org/phodder/prod-test/addon/pipelines/home#!/results/1387

The value of "$SECRET" is "cat". (When I do echo "$SECRET" | wc -m, there's is also a new line character which is why it's 4 and not 3).

Does any of that help?

[Ron Peled]

Ok, this helped. Yes, I was checking with 'cat' - that was confusing. 

I changed it a bit and it is now working the way we need it. Thanks!

[Philip Hodder]

Awesome! :)

[Philip Hodder]

Can you explain more on the problem you're having with the secured variables? Are you getting an error when you write it into the file?

Thanks,

Phil