hyperhive/docs/swarm/secrets.md

Swarm secrets: what exists, and where each one lives

A swarm's credentials are generated in three different places and read 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 deploy.nats.calloutUserPublicKey, is published to 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 below against one of these. This is a different cut from the 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 — each secret is generated where it's read, or copied by a host unit
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 — one of each per swarm

secret	generated by	lives at	hive elsewhere
swarm root CA cert	swarm-ca.nix first-boot unit, when autoConfigure is set	/var/lib/swarm-ca/root.pem	operator copies the cert in; it's public
swarm root CA key	same unit	/var/lib/swarm-ca/root-key.pem, 0600	stays on whichever host holds it — see the constraint below
swarm-services sub-CA (cert + key)	swarm-ca.nix, signed by the root	/var/lib/swarm-ca/services-ca{,-key}.pem	issued where the root lives
authelia session, JWT and storage-encryption keys	authelia's first-boot unit, in-container	/var/lib/authelia-swarm/{session,jwt,storage-encryption}.key	generated in place; nothing outside that container reads them
authelia OIDC HMAC key	same unit	/var/lib/authelia-swarm/oidc-hmac.key	same
authelia OIDC issuer key (RSA)	same unit	/var/lib/authelia-swarm/oidc-issuer.key	same — relying parties verify against the public half at /jwks.json
OIDC client secret, plaintext half	authelia crypto hash generate --random	/var/lib/authelia-swarm/oidc-clients/<id>.secret	operator provides the file and names it in whichever option reads it — sso.clientSecretFile for a service, otel.clientSecretFile for the hive's telemetry collector
OIDC client secret, digest half	the same mint	oidc-clients/<id>.digest	authelia's own half; merged at runtime via settingsFiles
the swarm collector's copy of its OIDC secret	swarm-otel-oidc-secret.service copies it from authelia's tree, when authelia runs on this host	/var/lib/swarm-otel-oidc/<id>.secret inside the swarm-otel container	operator provides the file and names it in deploy.swarm-otel.clientSecretFile — the collector need not share a host with authelia
Grafana's copy of its OIDC secret	swarm-bao-grafana-oidc.service reads it out of the swarm secret store, on every host that runs Grafana	/var/lib/grafana-oidc/<id>.secret inside the swarm-grafana container	same unit, same path — one route, co-located or not. Nothing for an operator to place beyond this host's store leaf, see below
authelia subject store	swarmctl and swarm-authelia-bridge	users.yml — one file, read and written by both	swarmctl, on the host that runs authelia
wireguard private key	the operator — wg genkey	whatever deploy.wireguard.privateKeyFile names	always operator-provided; nothing generates this for you
queue auth-callout nkeys (user seed + account seed)	swarm-nats-callout-keys first-boot unit, when deploy.nats.autoGenerateCallout is set	/var/lib/swarm-nats-callout/{callout-user,issuer}.seed, 0600	operator mints both with nk and names them in deploy.nats.calloutUserSeedFile / deploy.nats.calloutIssuerSeedFile
the secret store's own contents	openbao, on first bao operator init — an operator action, not a unit	inside the swarm-bao container, at its own /var/lib/openbao, kept across rebuilds by ephemeral = false. ⚠️ Not a host path: nixos-container destroy swarm-bao takes the raft data with it, so back up the container's tree, not /var/lib/. Only the store's TLS material (/var/lib/swarm-bao-tls) and its PKCS11 token (/var/lib/swarm-bao-token) are host-level	n/a — there is one store; a hive elsewhere is a client of it and holds none of this
the secret store's unseal material	the HSM/TPM under deploy.bao.seal = "pkcs11"; openbao itself under "shamir"	in the token; or held by whoever ran bao operator init, which is what "shamir" means and why it's stated rather than inferred	n/a — only the host running the store seals anything

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.

Two telemetry collectors exist, and they land on opposite sides of that test.

The hive's collector needs no delivery step. It authenticates to the swarm's collector as its own hive, and it's a host unit rather than a container, so on an all-local swarm it reads authelia's file where it lies and no second copy is made. On any other topology it's an ordinary "operator provides the file" case — see services.hyperhive.otel.clientSecretFile.

The swarm's collector does need one. It runs in a container, so swarm-otel-oidc-secret.service places its copy, landing at /var/lib/swarm-otel-oidc/<client-id>.secret — the same shape as the forge and homeserver rows below, and for the same reason: the container that mints the secret isn't the container that reads it.

The copy is made whenever authelia is enabled on this host, whatever this collector scrapes. The client it delivers for is registered unconditionally: authelia refuses a bearer-authz client with no audience, and the push audiences supply one even for a collector with nothing published to scrape. Like the hive-level delivery units below, this one waits a bounded 120s for authelia's mint and then fails rather than skipping, so a secret that never arrives takes the collector's container start with it instead of surfacing later as a 401.

⚠️ Don't read that delivery unit as the only way this collector is fed. Whether it authenticates follows the credential, never another service's placement: a swarm collector may run on a host that holds neither store and no authelia, and then the secret is an ordinary operator-provided file named in services.hyperhive.deploy.swarm-otel.clientSecretFile — the same shape as the hive collector's row above. The copy unit is the convenience for the co-located case, not the definition of the case.

Minting the queue's callout nkeys

deploy.nats.autoGenerateCallout mints both keypairs on the host before the queue starts. It's on by default only under singleHostSwarm — the one topology where the queue, its responder and the operator are the same person. On every other topology, mint them yourself:

nk -gen user    > callout-user.seed     # the responder's own identity
nk -gen account > issuer.seed           # signs the user JWTs it hands out
nk -inkey callout-user.seed -pubout     # → calloutUserPublicKey
nk -inkey issuer.seed       -pubout     # → calloutIssuerPublicKey

Keep both seeds at 0600 and name them in deploy.nats.calloutUserSeedFile / deploy.nats.calloutIssuerSeedFile. Possession of the issuer seed is the authority to admit anyone to the queue, so it belongs wherever the responder runs and nowhere else.

A hive that sets neither the public keys nor autoGenerateCallout fails at eval, naming the option it wants. That's deliberate: a queue that started without them would accept CONNECT {"user":"auth"} from anyone sharing the host's network namespace, and nothing would look wrong until somebody connected.

All four or none — the seed paths are required too, not just the public keys. They're two halves of the same pair: the server verifies with the public half, the responder signs with the private one. Supplying only the public keys used to pass eval and leave the queue with an auth-callout nobody answers, which refuses every client rather than degrading — and a refusal reaches the client as a timeout, so the symptom is every consumer hanging with nothing logged.

One consequence of the generated path worth knowing before you debug it: with autoGenerateCallout set, the queue assembles its config at boot rather than at build time, so a malformed one surfaces when the container starts instead of when the system builds. The server names the offending file and refuses to run.

Hive-level — one of each per hive

secret	generated by	lives at
hive CA cert + key	hive-tls.nix first-boot unit	<deploy.hive-controller.tls.stateDir>/ca.pem, ca-key.pem (0600)
hive leaf certs	hive-tls.nix, signed by the hive CA	<deploy.hive-controller.tls.stateDir>/<name>.pem
matrix registration token	a host activation script, on first boot	/var/lib/hyperhive/matrix-register-token (0600)
the forge's copy of its OIDC secret	hive-forge-oidc-secret.service copies it from authelia's tree	/var/lib/forgejo-oidc/<id>.secret inside the forge container
the homeserver's copy of its OIDC secret	hive-matrix-oidc-secret.service, same shape	/var/lib/tuwunel-oidc/<id>.secret, handed to tuwunel through LoadCredential
the agent containers' queue credential	authelia, published to the store by swarm-secret-publish	<deploy.hive-controller.queue.agentCredentialDir>/secret (0600) and /client_id (0644)

Both delivery units wait for authelia's first boot to mint the secret — a bounded wait, 120s — and then fail loudly 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 the matrix registration token, and it's worth saying why that one: it's an opaque 32-byte value with no second file and no format. Authelia's OIDC secret needs a .secret and a matching .digest, so starting there would have meant debugging "can a reader authenticate and get bytes back" and "is authelia's file format right" at once, with an SSO outage as the failure mode.

glue-matrix-bao-token.nix fetches it and writes the file hive-matrix.nix already reads, so the homeserver never learns the store exists. Every failure path — no such key, sealed store, unreachable store, empty value — leaves the locally minted token in place, so a hive with no store behaves exactly as it did before.

The second reader is the agent containers' queue credential: glue-queue-agent-credential.nix lands it as two files, the client secret and the client id it authenticates, because that's how a queue client reads them — the secret by path, the id by value. No local fallback exists, and none is possible, so absent files mean this hive's agents don't connect, which is what a swarm looks like before the publisher on the authelia host has run. The reader runs before hive-c0re.service and is wanted (not required) by it, so an agent container never renders ahead of the credential; an unreachable store delays the daemon's start rather than failing it.

That credential still has one hop left, because the reader of it lives inside an agent container. It crosses as a systemd credential, not as a bind mount, and the mode decides that: the secret is root:0600 and a harness runs as its own unprivileged agent user, so a bind would deliver a file that user can't open. hive-c0re stats the two files — the directory is 0755, so it needs no read access to either — and hands them to systemd-nspawn --load-credential through hive-priv, which runs as root. Inside, hive-agent.service names the same two ids in LoadCredential= and reads them out of its own $CREDENTIALS_DIRECTORY, owned by the agent user and by nobody else. hive-c0re never reads the bytes at any point: it runs as hive-core, which is the reason a copy wasn't an option either. When the files aren't there the daemon forwards nothing and says so in its journal, and the harness logs that it has no queue coordinates — the same absent-and-legal state, twice, rather than a container that refuses to start.

The third reader is Grafana's OIDC client secret, and it's the first one that's 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/<client-id>/oidc/client out of the store, on every host that runs Grafana. Where authelia is doesn't enter into it — the publisher on authelia's host 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 a host holds one out-of-band secret, its client certificate, and reads everything else with it.

Two things follow, and swarm-grafana.nix asserts both rather than degrading: running Grafana requires swarm.authelia.url (its local login form is disabled unconditionally, so SSO isn't a feature of some topologies — it's the only way in), and it requires this host's deploy.bao.clientCertFile / clientKeyFile. 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.

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. Every hive can therefore read every swarm service's client secret; that's the cost of a shape where the service's host has no store identity of its own to present, and it's stated in swarm-secret-client's policy module beside the grant itself. Absence behaves as it does for the other two 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. A credential you must already hold to authenticate can't be fetched from the thing it authenticates you to, so the store's identity can't come from an authority the store distributes — which excludes the hive CA and the swarm CA both, and has nothing to do with the gateway's HTTPS certificates either way. glue-bao-tls.nix mints a CA that signs exactly two things, the store's server certificate and a reader's client certificate, 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. It's the one credential that can't come out of the store, being what opens it; everything else a hive needs does.

How a reader reaches the store

Every reader dials the same URL — https://bao.<swarm domain>:<port> — 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. The passthrough carries whichever certificate the reader presents, unchanged.

The constraint that decides where the root lives

A hive CA carries nameConstraints=permitted;DNS:<hive domain>, and a swarm service name is a sibling of the hive domain rather than a child — forge.<swarm> next to <hive>.<swarm>. A hive CA can't issue a certificate for a swarm service. Not by policy: by construction, and openssl enforces it.

Whatever holds the swarm root is therefore what makes swarm-service certificates possible at all. Two things follow:

• The root's private key is a runtime file and must never enter the nix store, so nothing build-time can name it — security.pki.certificateFiles is read when the system is built, and is the wrong tool here. Trust reaches containers through a bind-mounted bundle assembled at boot instead.
• On any topology other than all-local, placing that key is an operations decision, not something this module tree makes for you. A hive that hosts no swarm services needs only the root's cert, to trust what others issue.

Adding a secret

State three things, in the row you add above: 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.