# Credentials: the target shape The swarm's credential store is bao. This page is the overview of how the swarm treats credentials; [`credentials-reference.md`](credentials-reference.md) lists each one: who mints it, who reads it, and how it renews, with the notes for operating them. It describes the target, not what's on disk today; the second half of the reference maps [the files that exist right now](credentials-reference.md#where-each-secret-lives-on-disk). **Store secrets stay off disk.** A process pulls a value from the store at runtime and holds it in memory only. **The mTLS client certificate is the only credential on disk.** Each identity (an agent, a hive, a swarm-level service) has one. It's what logs a principal in to the store, so you place a hive's or service's certificate by hand. The nix option for it takes a path to the certificate, never its bytes, because a literal in a nix expression lands in the world-readable nix store. A hive hands each agent its certificate; the agent pulls everything else itself. **Each credential has a minter, a reader and a renewal story.** Who mints it, who reads it, and whether it renews without an operator are what the [reference table](credentials-reference.md) gives for every credential, with the operating notes that go with them. ## Where a secret lives A swarm generates its credentials in three different places and reads them in a fourth, so "where does this file go" has a different answer per deployment. This page is that answer, one row per secret. Two rules run through all of it. **Private key material and access tokens are paths, never values.** Every option carrying one takes a file path (`*File`), because a literal written into a nix expression ends up in the nix store — world-readable and permanent. No option in this tree accepts one inline, and adding one would be a leak rather than a convenience. The rule is about what must stay secret, not about credentials generally. **Public material is a value**: a certificate, or a public nkey like the queue callout's user key, reaches every client that connects, so the store is a perfectly good place for it. **The generator and the reader typically live in different containers.** They share the host's network namespace, which makes them feel co-located, but their filesystem roots are separate. That's why delivery is a **host-side copy rather than a bind mount**: `nixos-container` refuses to start when a bind source is missing, and a secret minted on another container's first boot doesn't exist yet. Binding it would make one container wait on a file that waits on a container that starts after it. ### Topologies, by who places secrets Read every row of the [reference tables](credentials-reference.md#where-each-secret-lives-on-disk) against one of these. This is a different cut from the [deployment shapes](services.md#deployment-shapes) --- those say _where services run_, these say _who is responsible for a secret file being there_ --- the two lists don't line up one-to-one, and neither is a renaming of the other. | topology | what it means | who places secrets | | ------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **all-local** | one host runs the swarm's shared services and its own hive | nobody — the reader itself generates each secret, or a host unit copies it | | **swarm-managed** | the swarm's services run on a host with `swarmctl` | `swarmctl` writes what it owns; the rest is still generated in place | | **hive elsewhere** | a hive that federates with a swarm it doesn't host | the operator provides the file and names it in config | ## Swarm-level secrets The rows are in the [reference](credentials-reference.md#swarm-level--one-of-each-per-swarm). Authelia mints the three keys for itself, in-container, precisely because nothing outside that container ever reads them. **That's the test worth applying to any secret added here** — and the client secret's plaintext half is the one row that fails it, which is the entire reason a delivery step exists. Three telemetry collectors exist, and each one fails that test: each reads its own secret out of the store, under its own identity. The **hive's** collector authenticates to the swarm's collector as its own hive, so it reads its secret as the hive: `swarm-bao-hive-otel-oidc.service` fetches `swarm/hives//oidc/client` under the hive's own leaf (`deploy.bao.clientCertFile`), on every topology, into `/run/hive-otel-oidc` on the host's tmpfs. The file never reaches persistent disk and a reboot fetches it again; until the store answers, the collector runs on an empty file and the swarm refuses its exports. A hive with no leaf has no default, and the build stops at the collector's identity assertion unless `services.hyperhive.otel.clientSecretFile` names a file delivered some other way. The **swarm's** collector reads its own under a leaf of its own, the fourth store reader — the same shape as Grafana's, described in full below. In short: `swarm-bao-otel-oidc.service` reads `swarm/services//oidc/client` out of the store on every host that runs the collector and holds a store identity, whether authelia is a network away or in the container next door. The same call `glue-grafana-oidc-client.nix` makes for Grafana's registers the client it reads for unconditionally: authelia refuses a bearer-authz client with no audience, and every host publishes at least forgejo's `/metrics` as a scrape target, so the audience is never empty. ⚠️ **A collector with no store identity isn't refused.** Unlike Grafana, where an absent OIDC block is a container with no way in at all, a collector with nothing to authenticate with still receives every hive's telemetry — its pushes to the stores go out unauthenticated and get refused there, and its scrape jobs for the published targets read a credential file nothing loads, so they can't get a token. `swarm-bao-otel-oidc.service` therefore doesn't render at all without `deploy.bao.otelOidcClientCertFile` / `otelOidcClientKeyFile`, rather than the hard assertion `swarm-grafana.nix` uses for its non-optional one. The operator can still deliver the secret by hand, at `services.hyperhive.deploy.swarm-otel.clientSecretFile`, on a collector this unit never reaches. The **secret store's own** collector — the forwarder inside the `swarm-bao` container — needs a delivery step too, and it takes the same route with one principal of its own: `swarm-bao-forwarder-oidc.service` reads `swarm/services//oidc/client` under a leaf of its own and writes it to `/run/swarm-bao-forwarder-oidc` on the host's tmpfs, which the container bind-mounts read-only and where `LoadCredential` hands it to the collector. The client id is its own (`services.hyperhive.swarm.bao.otel.clientId`), registered by `glue-swarm-bao-otel-oidc-client.nix` wherever authelia runs, and the swarm collector admits it on a receiver of its own — one identity per principal, so this forwarder borrows neither the swarm collector's client nor `swarm-controller`'s. ⚠️ **This one has no degraded mode, and the difference is structural.** The route it exports over accepts an authenticated request and nothing else, so a forwarder without the secret has nothing to fall back to: the unit fails and retries, and the collector refuses to start until the file arrives, after every boot, rather than exporting into a 401 while reporting healthy. Its ordering differs from the unit above it for the same structural reason — it reads the store inside the container it delivers into, so it runs **after** that container rather than before it. The fetch creates the file, so when the store stays sealed or unreachable after a boot the forwarder stays down, then resumes from its saved journal cursor once the store answers. ### The queue's callout nkeys The responder holds two nkeys besides the callout xkey below. It signs every user JWT it issues with the **issuer** key, an account key, so possession of the issuer seed is the authority to admit anyone to the queue. It connects to the queue as the **user** key, the one identity the server exempts from callout. You configure nothing about either: both live in the swarm secret store beside the xkey, and come into being on the queue's first boot. - **Issuer seed** at `secret/swarm/services/swarm-nats/callout/issuer-seed`, **public half** at `secret/swarm/public/swarm-nats/callout-issuer`. - **User seed** at `secret/swarm/services/swarm-nats/callout/user-seed`, **public half** at `secret/swarm/public/swarm-nats/callout-user`. The unit that creates the xkey creates these too, under the same rules: only the `swarm-nats-auth` role reads or creates them, nothing replaces a stored seed, and the policy of `swarm-secret-publisher` denies it both seed paths. The server renders both public halves into its `auth_callout` block as it starts, and doesn't start without them. A seed file at `/var/lib/swarm-nats-callout/issuer.seed` or `/var/lib/swarm-nats-callout/callout-user.seed` on the queue's host is what `swarm-nats-auth ensure-callout-keys` stores for that key when the store holds none, so the key keeps its public half. Once a read of the store returns a seed, the verb removes the file. When the store already holds a different seed, the verb keeps the store's seed, logs a warning naming the file, then removes it. A hive that sets `autoGenerateCallout`, `calloutUserPublicKey`, `calloutIssuerPublicKey`, `calloutUserSeedFile` or `calloutIssuerSeedFile`, under `deploy.nats` or `swarm.nats`, fails at eval with a message naming the option and where the keys live now. To replace either key, delete both of its paths the way the xkey's section below shows for the xkey, then restart `swarm-bao-nats-callout-xkey`. One consequence worth knowing before you debug it: the queue assembles its config each time the server starts rather than at build time, in every mode, because the callout keys exist only at runtime. A malformed config surfaces when the server starts instead of when the system builds. The server names the offending file and refuses to run. ### The queue's callout xkey The server seals every auth-callout request to a curve key, the callout xkey, and the responder seals its reply back, so nothing else in the callout account or on the wire can read the request or the user JWT minted for it. You configure nothing about the key: it lives in the swarm secret store and comes into being on the queue's first boot. - **Seed** at `secret/swarm/services/swarm-nats/callout/xkey-seed`. - **Public half** at `secret/swarm/public/swarm-nats/callout-xkey`. Only the `swarm-nats-auth` role reads either path, and it may create each but never replace it. The policy of `swarm-secret-publisher`, which writes the rest of `swarm/services/`, denies it the seed's path. On the queue's host, `swarm-bao-nats-callout-xkey` runs before the `swarm-nats` container, under the responder's store leaf: 1. `swarm-nats-auth ensure-callout-keys` creates the pair when the store holds no seed, and otherwise only reads it. It needs no queue, so on a first boot the key exists before the server that needs it. 2. It reads the public half back from the store into `/var/lib/nats-callout/callout-xkey.pub` inside the container. 3. Each time `nats-server` starts, it renders that key into `auth_callout.xkey`. With no file, the server doesn't start. 4. The responder starts after the server and reads the seed from the store. A responder that can't read it doesn't start, rather than answering requests it can't open. The store has to be reachable each time the responder starts. When it's down, the fetch unit fails and retries for a day. The server starts with the key fetched last time, or not at all on a first boot. A responder that starts while the store is down exits and retries every 5 seconds, and until one start reads the seed the queue refuses every client, OIDC ones included. The retry that lands the file starts or restarts the server, and the responder comes up with it. The responder's store leaf is `deploy.nats.authBaoClientCertFile` / `authBaoClientKeyFile`. On the store's host both default to the leaf `glue-bao-tls.nix` mints there. A queue host without the store gets no default, even when it holds the hive's own reader `deploy.bao.clientCertFile`: issue a leaf whose subject is `deploy.bao.natsAuthCommonName`, place it, and name it in both options. Until you do, evaluation fails naming both. Where the queue and the store run on different hosts, deploy the store's host first. `swarm-bao-nats-auth-policy` there writes the role's grants on the keys' paths, and `swarm-bao-secret-publisher-policy` the publisher's denial of the seeds' paths; where the queue runs on that host too, the fetch waits for both. A queue host deployed before it can't read or create the keys, so its fetch fails, and the queue refuses every client until you deploy the store's host: the server starts only on public keys fetched before, and the responder can't load its seeds. Seed files the import is waiting for stay where they are. If that takes longer than the fetch's day of retries, run `systemctl restart swarm-bao-nats-callout-xkey` on the queue's host. Two starts that create the key at once can't both win: each write is a create that fails once the path holds anything, and the start that lost reads the winner's key back. To replace the key, remove both paths with their metadata and every version, then restart the fetch unit on the queue's host. Its restart of `nats.service` restarts the responder too, which then loads the new seed: ```sh bao kv metadata delete secret/swarm/services/swarm-nats/callout/xkey-seed bao kv metadata delete secret/swarm/public/swarm-nats/callout-xkey systemctl restart swarm-bao-nats-callout-xkey ``` `bao kv delete` isn't enough. It deletes the latest version but keeps the path's metadata, so the store still counts the path as existing and refuses the create that makes a new key. No principal hyperhive configures may delete either path's metadata, so run the two deletes with a token that may, such as the root token. ## Hive-level secrets The rows are in the [reference](credentials-reference.md#hive-level--one-of-each-per-hive). The forge and the homeserver read their copies out of the store, the way Grafana does below: the forge under the forge publisher's leaf, the homeserver under matrix-ctl's. Each **fails loudly** and retries until the publisher in authelia's container has written the secret, rather than skipping. A silent skip produces a service whose login button always fails, which is a symptom many layers from its cause. The store's **first reader** is Grafana's OIDC client secret, a _swarm service's_ own credential rather than a hive's. It has exactly one delivery route: `swarm-bao-grafana-oidc.service` reads `swarm/services//oidc/client` out of the store, on **every** host that runs Grafana. Where authelia is doesn't enter into it — the publisher in authelia's container writes that path whether the reader is a network away or in the container next door. That's a deliberate refusal of the shortcut. Copying the plaintext straight out of authelia's tree when the two happen to share a host is one round trip cheaper and costs a second delivery unit, a second way for the file to be wrong, and a gate deciding between them — and the gate is the expensive part, because whatever it's wrong about is an outage nobody can read. The store exists so the only secrets a host holds out of band are **certificates**, and a host reads everything else with them. Two things follow, and `swarm-grafana.nix` asserts both rather than degrading: running Grafana requires `swarm.authelia.url` (this module disables its local login form unconditionally, so SSO isn't a feature of some topologies — it's the only way into the UI), and it requires this host's `deploy.bao.grafanaOidcClientCertFile` / `grafanaOidcClientKeyFile`. Each refusal names the option to set. Both used to be silent: a null URL dropped the OIDC block, a missing leaf produced a warning, and either one left a Grafana with no SSO and no password box — nothing failed, so nothing said anything. Registration is separate and stays where authelia is (`glue-grafana-oidc-client.nix`): a client is a row in authelia's own config, so it's declared on the host running authelia, which isn't necessarily the host running Grafana. The swarm controller, the queue, the homeserver and the forge register the same way (`glue-controller-oidc-client.nix`, `glue-nats-oidc-client.nix`, `glue-matrix-oidc-client.nix`, `glue-forge-oidc-client.nix`), and the queue's responder, the homeserver and the forge read their secrets from the store too: the responder itself under its own leaf, `swarm-bao-matrix-oidc.service` under matrix-ctl's, `swarm-bao-forge-oidc.service` under the forge publisher's. Each fails, naming the option pair, when that leaf is unset — neither the responder nor the homeserver starts without its secret, and the forge registers no login source without its. Grafana's admin password rides the same leaf and the same store. Where Grafana and the store run on different hosts, deploy the store's host first: `swarm-bao-grafana-oidc-policy` there writes the grant that lets Grafana create the password, and until it has, the store refuses `swarm-bao-grafana-admin` on the Grafana host, which retries, while Grafana stays down because its config reads that file. The **second reader** is the swarm collector's own OIDC client secret, the same shape one level down: `swarm-bao-otel-oidc.service` reads `swarm/services//oidc/client` out of the store on every host that runs the collector, and registration lives separately in `glue-swarm-otel-oidc-client.nix` for the same reason Grafana's does. Where it differs is what an absent credential means: the collector still receives telemetry with none, so `swarm-otel.nix` doesn't assert `deploy.bao.otelOidcClientCertFile` / `otelOidcClientKeyFile` the way Grafana does — it doesn't render the reading unit without them. The **third reader** is the secret store forwarder's OIDC client secret: `swarm-bao-forwarder-oidc.service`, on the store's own host, registered by `glue-swarm-bao-otel-oidc-client.nix` on authelia's. It differs from the second in both directions. It renders unconditionally, because the export it authenticates has no unauthenticated mode to degrade into — and it orders itself **after** `container@swarm-bao`, because the store it reads runs in the container it delivers into. Nothing circular sits behind that: the identity it logs in with is the static `forwarder-oidc.pem` leaf `swarm-bao-pki` signs, not anything the store mints. With no leaf it has no fallback, so `swarm-bao.nix` refuses the build and names `deploy.bao.forwarderOidcClientCertFile` / `forwarderOidcClientKeyFile`. A service's secret is one value for the whole swarm rather than one per hive, so it lives under the `services` prefix, and a hive's read policy grants that prefix whole. That's because nothing in a swarm's configuration records which hive runs a given service — placement is a `deploy.*` fact, per-host by definition — so there is nothing to scope the grant to. A hive's **own** leaf can therefore read every swarm service's client secret, and that's stated in `swarm-secret-client`'s `policy` module beside the grant itself. ⚠️ **The readers no longer present it.** Five units used to log in with `deploy.bao.clientCertFile`, which is the hive's own leaf, and bao identifies a principal by the subject of the certificate it presents — so five readers behind one leaf were one principal holding the union of their needs. Each now holds a leaf of its own, and a policy naming only the path that unit reads. See [per-principal identities](#per-principal-identities) below. Absence behaves as it does for the other readers: a store that says "not here" leaves the file alone and says so, since there is no such thing as a locally valid OIDC client secret to stand in. ⚠️ **Service↔store mTLS is its own trust domain.** You can't fetch a credential you must already hold to authenticate from the thing it authenticates you to, so the store's identity can't come from an authority the store distributes — which excludes the store's `pki` root, and has nothing to do with the gateway's HTTPS certificates either way. `glue-bao-tls.nix` mints a CA that signs a fixed, short list of leaves — the store's server certificate, the hive's own reader certificate, and one per service principal — and distributes nothing. A deployment with a real internal CA deletes that file and names its own paths in `deploy.bao.serverCertFile` / `clientCaFile`; the store itself has no opinion. A hive that reads from a store on **another** machine names the reader's half — `clientCertFile`, `clientKeyFile`, `serverCaFile` — and places that leaf by hand, plus one leaf per principal it runs (the [table in the reference](credentials-reference.md#store-identities-one-per-principal) names the options). Those are the credentials that can't come out of the store, being what opens it; everything else a hive needs does. Agents are the one principal whose leaf the store issues. Its `pki-agents` mount (`deploy.bao.agentPkiMountPath`) holds an agent CA generated inside the store, and `swarm-controller`, already logged in under its own host leaf, asks that mount's one role for a `hive-agent-` client certificate at agent creation. Host roles never pin that CA and agent roles pin only it, so an agent's certificate opens that agent's own `swarm/agents//*` and nothing else: `read` on the values there and `list` on their names. `swarm-controller` writes that policy at agent creation and rewrites every agent's at its own start, so a change to it reaches existing agents with the next controller restart. The agent's cert-auth role attaches a second policy, `hive-agent`, shared by all agents. It states the same rule with `{{identity.entity.name}}` where the per-agent policy has the agent's name, so the rule is one document. For that the controller names each agent's identity entity after the agent: at agent creation, and for every agent at its own start, it reads the cert mount's accessor and creates the entity `` with the alias `hive-agent-`, or renames the entity a first login created under a generated name. When the alias sits on any other entity, the controller logs an error and changes nothing. It needs the `identity/` and `sys/auth/cert` grants in `swarm-bao.nix`'s `controllerPolicyText` for that. Without them it logs a warning and the agent keeps working through its own policy, which stays attached until every agent has its entity. An agent's role gains `hive-agent` at its next certificate mint. A hive's cert-auth role `hive-` likewise attaches a second policy, `hive-hives`, shared by all hives. A hive's certificate carries its bare name as the common name, which is the login's alias name, so hives need no entity: the policy states the hive's own path as `swarm/hives/{{identity.entity.aliases..name}}/*`, where `` is the cert mount's accessor. The controller reads the accessor at its own start, writes the policy, and attaches it when it rewrites the roles. No hive name can spell `hive-hives`: it would be a hive called `hives`, and `reserved-hive-fragments.nix` refuses the substring `hive`. When the controller can't read the accessor or write the policy it logs a warning and the role attaches the hive's own policy alone, which stays attached. ### Per-principal identities Bao matches a cert-auth role on the certificate's subject, so a certificate is an identity and sharing one merges the identities. The leaves, their option names and what each reaches are in the [reference](credentials-reference.md#store-identities-one-per-principal). Each reaches a path that names a swarm service rather than a hive, so one role each is enough and their subjects are the flat `deploy.bao.grafanaOidcCommonName`, `deploy.bao.otelOidcCommonName`, `deploy.bao.forwarderOidcCommonName`, `deploy.bao.ciRunnerCommonName`, `deploy.bao.reviewClassifierCommonName`, `deploy.bao.builderCommonName`, `deploy.bao.ciMetricsCommonName`, `deploy.bao.claudeLoginCommonName` and `deploy.bao.forgePublisherCommonName`. The last two are the writers, and the last is the one leaf two units share: the forge's host holds one store identity for the token it publishes and the OIDC client secret it reads. On a host that mints its own PKI, `glue-bao-tls.nix` signs all nine and defaults all eighteen options, and there is nothing to do. Elsewhere you copy each leaf from the store's host and name it here: a service principal's from the top of `/var/lib/swarm-bao-pki/`, another hive's leaves from `/var/lib/swarm-bao-pki/hives//` ([bao.md § TLS](bao.md#tls) lists that directory). That's one file per principal rather than one file shared by nine, which is the whole of what this buys. `swarm-ci-runner.nix` refuses the build wherever the runner runs without its pair, as `swarm-review-classifier.nix` does for the classifier, `swarm-ci-metrics.nix` for the CI run poller and `swarm-grafana.nix` for Grafana. The forge's pair refuses nothing: without it `forgejo-swarm-controller-account` and `swarm-bao-forge-oidc` render, fail at start naming both options, and the controller runs without forge access and the forge without a login source until an operator places the leaf. On a host without the store, where the forwarder never runs, forgetting one of the others isn't a quiet degrade. A hand-configured remote-store hive that names the hive's own `clientCertFile` and misses a principal's pair has the build refused, by the module of the reader it missed, naming that pair — see [what a missing leaf costs](#what-a-missing-leaf-costs) below. The roles of `swarm-nats-auth`, `swarm-logs-auth` and `swarm-metrics-auth` issue batch tokens with a five-minute TTL (`token_type=batch`, `token_ttl=5m`). The responders log in on every check, and the store keeps no record of a batch token, so unauthenticated requests don't grow its token storage. Nothing can renew or revoke a batch token. The other roles keep service tokens, because some of their readers hold a handle for longer than five minutes. ### What a missing leaf costs Each of the four modules asserts its own pair, on the same condition: **this host already reads the store** — it holds `deploy.bao.clientCertFile` and `clientKeyFile` — **and the consumer is on, and this principal's pair is null**. The refusal names the two options, so an operator acts on the message without opening the nix. That condition fires on exactly one shape, the hand-configured remote-store hive that named the hive's own pair and missed a principal's. It stays silent everywhere else, and each half of that matters on its own: - **A host with no store identity at all** holds no `clientCertFile` either, so the first clause is false. That's the supported no-store deployment, and also the one an operator passes through while bringing a hive up — neither should fail to evaluate. - **A host that runs the store** gets every pair from `glue-bao-tls.nix` as defaults, so the third clause is false. Nothing to set, nothing to refuse. - **A consumer that's off** — no collector, no Grafana — has no unit to skip, so the second clause is false. The collector keeps a separate degrade underneath this, unchanged: a host with no store identity runs a collector with no OIDC client secret and still receives telemetry. The assertion doesn't touch that shape, because that host has no `clientCertFile` either. ## How a reader reaches the store Every reader dials the same URL — `https://bao.:` — and on the host that runs the store that name resolves twice. `/etc/hosts` answers a host-side unit with loopback, where openbao binds; the hive's dnsmasq answers a container with the bridge IP, where nginx holds the same port. One `BAO_ADDR`, and the network namespace that asked decides which half of it answers. The container's half goes through nginx and **still doesn't terminate TLS**. It is an nginx `stream` server with `ssl_preread on`: it reads the SNI off the ClientHello and splices the rest of the connection through byte for byte, so openbao completes the handshake itself. A vhost would decrypt here instead, and the client certificate — the store's whole authentication — would stop at nginx, leaving openbao seeing one client for every hive in the swarm. That's why the store has no vhost and gets a passthrough: not an exception to the no-vhost rule, the one shape that keeps it. The stream listener binds the bridge IP rather than every address, because openbao already holds loopback on that port in the same network namespace and a wildcard bind would fail with `EADDRINUSE` — taking nginx, and with it every hive domain behind the gateway, down. `network.exposeHostPorts` opens the port on the bridge firewall and nowhere else. Reaching the port grants nothing by itself: openbao answers nothing without a client certificate signed by `deploy.bao.clientCaFile` or by the store's own agent CA. The listener reads both from `listener-client-ca.pem`, which no cert-auth role pins. The passthrough carries whichever certificate the reader presents, unchanged. ## The browser UI OpenBao's built-in web UI is at `https://bao-ui./` (`swarm.bao.ui.domain`), for members of authelia's `admins` group only. Log in with the **OIDC** tab, or with a bao token under **Other**. The gateway vhost checks the session with authelia and proxies to an nginx inside the store's container on `127.0.0.1:`. That nginx forwards `/ui/` and `/v1/` to a second openbao listener on `127.0.0.1:`, answers 403 on the unseal, seal, step-down, rekey and generate-root endpoints, and 404 on everything else. ⚠️ That listener asks for **no client certificate**, because a browser has none to present, so on this one door a bao token is the whole credential. Anything on the store's host that can dial loopback, and any `admins` session through the vhost, needs only a token to use the API. Unseal from the host's `bao` CLI; the UI's unseal form gets a 403. On a self-signed gateway where the UI is the only swarm name its host fronts, that host's nginx doesn't wait for the store: it serves the hive leaf, or on a host that runs no hive a throwaway self-signed certificate, on the UI's name (a browser warning) until the unsealed store issues the services leaf, so the stream passthrough readers use on that host comes up with the store sealed. ### OIDC login The OIDC tab logs in through authelia as the client `swarm-bao-ui` (`swarm.bao.ui.oidc.clientId`). An `admins` member gets a token under `swarm-operator-viewer`: `list` and `read` on `secret/metadata/*`, and `create` and `update` on `secret/data/swarm/services/review-classifier/anthropic-api-key` and `secret/data/swarm/services/review-classifier/acp-provider`. That shows the key tree and each key's versions and timestamps, and no value: the store refuses every `secret/data/` read. The two writes are the review classifier's keys, which the operator fills in by hand. Anything more needs a token. | piece | written by | | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | authelia client, with redirect `swarm.bao.ui.oidc.redirectUri` | `glue-bao-ui-oidc-client.nix`, wherever authelia runs | | its secret at `swarm/services/swarm-bao-ui/oidc/client` | `swarm-secret-publish`, like every other service's | | the `oidc` auth mount | `swarm-bao-granter-role`, with the bootstrap token | | `swarm-operator-viewer` policy, the mount's config and role `swarm-operator-viewer` | `swarm-bao-operator-viewer-policy`, as the granter, which reads the secret above into the config | The granter holds no `sys/auth`, so enabling the mount stays a bootstrap-token step. A store set up before the mount existed needs the [one-time granter step](../getting-started/setup.md) again: it re-writes `bao-bootstrap`, which covers `sys/auth/oidc`, and the granter's own policy, which covers `auth/oidc/`. Until then `swarm-bao-operator-viewer-policy` writes the viewer policy, logs the step, and exits 0, and the UI offers token login only. `swarm-bao-granter-role` re-runs it each time the step succeeds, so OIDC login needs no further restart. ## The constraint that decides where the root lives The store issues a hive's gateway leaf through a role whose `allowed_domains` is that hive's domain and `*.` that domain, and **a swarm service name is a sibling of the hive domain rather than a child** — `forge.` next to `.`. That role can't issue a certificate for a swarm service; the store refuses it. The store's `swarm-services` role issues them instead, from the root inside its `pki` mount. That root's private key never leaves the mount, and its certificate is the only anchor the swarm has. Each hive fetches the certificate from the store at boot, so nothing build-time can name it — the system reads `security.pki.certificateFiles`' value at build time, which makes it the wrong tool here. Host containers get a bind-mounted bundle assembled at boot; an agent fetches the root itself with its own store certificate. ## Adding a secret State three things, in the row you add to the [reference](credentials-reference.md#where-each-secret-lives-on-disk): **who mints it**, **which container reads it**, and **what happens when they differ**. If they differ, it needs a delivery unit, and the unit copies — it doesn't bind.