agenix/doc/problem-and-solution.md
Ryan Mulligan 657789137c doc: add new doc website
* use mmdoc
* add github pages action to auto publish
* do not edit README for now, will follow up with a commit directs
people to the doc site
2023-03-04 10:34:29 -08:00

596 B

Problem and solution

All files in the Nix store are readable by any system user, so it is not a suitable place for including cleartext secrets. Many existing tools (like NixOps deployment.keys) deploy secrets separately from nixos-rebuild, making deployment, caching, and auditing more difficult. Out-of-band secret management is also less reproducible.

agenix solves these issues by using your pre-existing SSH key infrastructure and age to encrypt secrets into the Nix store. Secrets are decrypted using an SSH host private key during NixOS system activation.