Why: the usual way to hand a secret to a container is to mount it as a file
and name the path in the environment. Compose, swarm and Kubernetes all do
it that way, and it keeps the key out of the process environment and off any
disk the container can write.
What: the master key is now looked for in KEEPORG_MASTER_KEY, then
KEEPORG_MASTER_KEY_FILE, then the configured master_key_file. A secret file
may hold base64, with or without padding or a trailing newline, or exactly
32 raw bytes, because secret stores produce both.
Only the configured path is ever created, which is what keeps a plain
package install working with no setup. The two environment variables name a
key something else owns, so a missing one is reported and vault creation
refused. Minting a replacement there would be worse than failing: it opens
none of the existing vaults, and the mistake would otherwise surface one
failed merge at a time.
The compose example now provisions the key as a real secret rather than an
environment variable, and the Dockerfile and README show the same. Neither
names a version any more, so they stop drifting as the server is bumped.
Proved: unit tests for every source and precedence, all four accepted
encodings, and that a missing secret writes nothing anywhere. In real
containers: a podman secret carrying base64 survives a stop and start with
"1 vault keys available for merging" and merges a stale push afterwards; a
secret holding 32 raw bytes creates a vault; and a secret that failed to
mount is named in the startup log, with vault creation answering with the
three places a key may come from.
Why: the server is a single static binary with no dependencies, so its
container should be nothing but that binary. Shipping one also makes the
master key easy to lose, which needed handling rather than documenting.
What:
- Dockerfile: two stages, runtime is scratch plus the binary and a CA bundle
for reaching an OIDC provider, running as uid 65532. About 9 MB. The build
stage copies only go.mod, cmd/keeporgd and internal, so client or docs
changes do not invalidate it.
- The image has no shell, so HEALTHCHECK runs `keeporgd -healthcheck`, a new
flag that probes /healthz on the configured address and exits non-zero
with a reason. podman needs --format docker to keep the healthcheck at
all, which the Makefile passes when it picks podman.
- New -master-key-file flag, so a mounted secret works without a config file.
- The server now checks at startup whether the master key still opens the
stored vault keys, and says so. Without it, a container restarted without
its key discovers the problem one failed merge at a time.
- make docker, docker-run and docker-save; a compose example with read_only,
cap_drop ALL and no-new-privileges.
- The client and the server now version independently, so their Debian
changelogs are split per package and `make changelog` takes PKG=.
Server 0.3.0; the clients stay at 0.2.0.
Proved: built with podman and run. The container serves /healthz and /web,
its own healthcheck reports healthy, and a vault created through it was
edited from the same base by keepassxc-cli twice, merged by the server into
version 3, and read back with both entries intact. Restarted without the
master key it warns "1 of 1 stored vault keys do not open with this master
key" and answers a merging push with 409 merge_failed, leaving the vault
untouched; restored, it logs "1 vault keys available for merging" and merges
again. The same key supplied through -master-key-file from a mounted file
works identically. Both .deb packages build with their own changelog, and
make check is clean.
Why: the point of a sync server is that two people can work at once. Picking
a winner was all this one could do while it could not read a vault.
What, end to end:
- A vault is created at /web or with `keeporg vault -create`: the server
builds an empty KDBX 4 file, encrypts it with the password from the form,
and stores it as version 1. An existing database can adopt a stored key
with `keeporg db -id <id> -store-password`, which is verified against the
stored file before it is accepted.
- A stale push to a `merge` vault is no longer refused. The server opens the
stored version and the pushed one in memory, folds them together, and
stores the re-encrypted result. Clients push as usual and pull what comes
back. Any failure answers 409 merge_failed and the client keeps its copy
aside, so a failed merge still loses nothing.
- At rest: vault contents stay KDBX-encrypted as always. A merge vault's
password is kept AES-256-GCM-wrapped under a master key that lives outside
the data directory, bound to the vault id, never returned by the API. A
stolen data directory is ciphertext; a stolen data directory plus the
master key is not. The server runs without a master key and simply refuses
to create or merge vaults.
This moves the server inside the trust boundary for vaults it can merge,
which is inherent to merging and is stated plainly in the README, the
handover notes and the web form itself. Key-less strategies are unchanged and
remain the default for a database created without a password.
Proved: two clients editing the same version are merged rather than refused,
the newer edit of one entry wins, a merge failure leaves the stored vault
untouched, `merge` is refused without a stored key, the wrapped key never
appears in state.json or the API, and the web interface rejects a form
without its CSRF token, withholds its cookie over plain http, and only offers
groups the user administers. Checked by hand against the real thing: a vault
created in a browser, edited by keepassxc-cli on two sides from the same
version, merged by the server, and both entries read back out with
keepassxc-cli. make check, make test-race, android lint and both .deb builds
are clean.
Why: collaborative KeePass use needs one arbiter of "who wrote last" that
never sees a master password, plus access control that follows an org chart.
What: stdlib-only Go server. Metadata is a single JSON document with one
writer and atomic commit; KDBX payloads are versioned blobs on disk. Access
comes from a group tree where a grant on a group reaches every member below
it. Login is password+TOTP, invite links, or OIDC through a browser-approved
device flow. Pushes carry If-Match and are arbitrated by a per-database merge
strategy (server-wins by default). Updates are pushed to clients over SSE.
Proved: go test ./internal/... covers RFC 6238 vectors, ACL inheritance and
isolation, store rollback, blob pruning, every push verdict, and an
end-to-end HTTP pass over login, conflict, force, read-only grants, invite
redemption, TOTP enrolment, device login and the event stream.
root