Store and Retrieve Secrets from the Linux Keyring
Keyring is a Linux security feature that stores sensitive information, such as passwords and secrets, and allows applications to securely access it.
The code base for the Linux Keyring Utility can be found here:
The binary needed to use the above utility can be found here:
To use the Linux Keyring Utility, you can either
or import it into your code base.
Both use cases are covered below.
There are two packages, dbus_secrets and secret_collection. The secret_collection object uses the functions in dbus_secrets. It unifies the D-Bus Connection, Session and Collection Service objects to offer a simple get/set/delete interface that the CLI uses.
The Go Language API has offers Get(), Set() and Delete() methods. The first two accept and return string data.
The .DefaultCollection() returns whatever collection the default alias refers to. It will generate an error if the default alias is not set. It usually points to the login keyring. Most Linux Keyring interfaces allow the user to set it.
The .NamedCollection(string) method provides access to collections by name.
Set takes the data as a parameter and only returns an error or nil on success. It does not restrict the content or length of the secret data.
The Linux binary supports three subcommands:
get
set
del
Get and del require one parameter; name, which is the secret Label in D-Bus API terms.
Del accepts one or more secret labels and deletes all of them. If it generates an error it will stop.
Set also requires the data as a single string in the second parameter. For example, set foo bar baz will generate an error but set foo 'bar baz' will work. If the string is - then the string is read from standard input.
Get and set take a -b or --base64 flag that handles base64 automatically. If used, Set will encode the input before storing it and/or get will decode it before printing.
Note that calling get -b on a secret that is not base64 encoded secret will generate an error.
Error output goes to stderr so adding 2>/dev/null to the end of a command will suppress it.
The login collection does not exist because the keyring does not exist. KDE may create kdewallet instead of login like GNOME.
There may not be a D-Bus Session to host the Secret Service. This happens when the user is not logged into the GUI.
The system may not host D-Bus. Several lightweight linux distributions ship without it by default.