Transient secrets

[Diego Zuccato]

Hi all.

Is there a preferred way to pass a (different) secret to every host 
being installed?

Something to implement a workflow like:
- admin asks Salt to (re)install a host
- salt handles shutdown and switch reconfiguration (OT)
- salt tells FAIserver to enable install of given host
- FAI generates the secret and passes it back to Salt (or Salt generates 
the secret and passes it to FAI, as long there's a shared secret)
- the host boots via network and installs as usual, saving/using the 
given secret
- FAI (or the reinstalled host) tells Salt reinstall is complete and 
Salt "cleans up" (reconfig switches & so on) (OT)

The only "solution" I could find is to save the secret in 
/srv/tftp/fai/pxelinux.cfg/C0A8xxyy in append line, like FAI_FLAGS, 
FAI_CONFIG_SRC and FAI_ACTION, but since append line can be at most 255 
chars there's not much space... I's good just for very small "secrets" 
(that gets transferred in the clear, hence the need to reconfigure the 
switches).

-- 
Diego Zuccato
DIFA - Dip. di Fisica e Astronomia
Servizi Informatici
Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna
V.le Berti-Pichat 6/2 - 40127 Bologna - Italy
tel.: +39 051 20 95786