Forum: Ruby on Rails Quick gem to help with passwords

I've created a small gem called multa_arcana (latin for "Many Secrets")
which allows one to store all Rails secrets in one file, which should 
not
be checked into revision control, but other files then can be.  Source 
is
on https://github.com/skandragon/multa_arcana

Usage:

  add to Gemfile:  gem 'multa_arcana'

Create a file to hold the secrets:  config/secrets.yml
While the filename can be changed, it is somewhat hard to do so without
modifying a file that is loaded fairly early, like application.rb.  I 
just
use the default.  Currently to change this, one must pass in a file to 
load
on the first call to retrieve a secret.  API suggestions welcome.

Place in this file the various secrets your rails app needs to keep 
secret:

db_username: john
db_password: my-super-secret-db-password
secret_token: lkasjdlkqjlkas...la9u9203udkd
redis: redis://user:password-for-redis@host
devise_pepper: 239ru2ij3jf9u02dhis...92930d02hdhdlka3

Use it wherever you need to:

config/database.yml:

production:
  adapter: postgresql
  encoding: unicode
  database: thing_production
  pool: 5
  host: 127.0.0.1
  username: <% MultaArcana::secret_for(:db_username) %>
  password: <% MultaArcana::secret_for(:db_password) %>


config/initializers/secret_token.rb:

Thing::Application.config.secret_token =
MultaArcana::secret_for(:secret_token)


--
(Ruby, Rails, Random) blog:  http://blog.flame.org/

Michael Graff wrote in post #1098246:
> I've created a small gem called multa_arcana (latin for "Many Secrets")
> which allows one to store all Rails secrets in one file, which should
> not
> be checked into revision control, but other files then can be.  Source
> is
> on https://github.com/skandragon/multa_arcana

Interesting, but what advantage does this have over...

https://github.com/binarylogic/settingslogic

Probably none, but "settingslogic" didn't appear in my search when I 
looked
for ways to store secrets in a single file.  :)

Why not just use environment variables?

Michael Graff wrote in post #1098252:
> Probably none, but "settingslogic" didn't appear in my search when I
> looked
> for ways to store secrets in a single file.  :)

Sure there is advantage to writing your own gem. You wrote it, and 
shared it with the community. That's AWESOME! I considered doing 
something similar, until I ran across SettingsLogic.

> Posted by unknown (Guest) on 2013-02-22 09:05
> Why not just use environment variables?

Yes, environment variables are certainly an option, but I really like 
the consistent API, and baked-in support for different environments that 
SettingLogic provides.

Because environment variables show up in process lists.

If it's an issue of security...if somebody is already looking at your
processes, what's keeping them from cd'ing to your application's config
directory and reading secrets.yml?