ign8vault 2.0.0

Spin up a production HashiCorp Vault + Consul stack in minutes — Hetzner Cloud, Cloudflare DNS, automated backups to Hetzner StorageBox.

ign8vault

Spin up a production HashiCorp Vault + Consul stack in minutes — Hetzner Cloud VPS, Cloudflare DNS, Let's Encrypt TLS, and daily restic backups to Hetzner StorageBox.

pipx install ign8vault
ign8vault quickstart   # full step-by-step guide

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Quickstart

1. Install

pipx install ign8vault

2. Configure

ign8vault setenv

Walks you through every credential interactively with hints on where to find each value. Writes a .env file in the current directory. Run it again after provisioning to fill in VAULT_ADDR and VAULT_TOKEN.

Variable	Where to get it
IGN8_DOMAIN	Your base domain, e.g. example.com
IGN8_ADMIN_EMAIL	Your email — used for Let's Encrypt notifications
IGN8_HETZNER_TOKEN	console.hetzner.cloud → Project → Security → API Tokens
IGN8_CLOUDFLARE_TOKEN	dash.cloudflare.com → Profile → API Tokens (Zone:DNS:Edit)
IGN8_CLOUDFLARE_ZONE_ID	Cloudflare dashboard → select domain → Overview → right sidebar
IGN8_STORAGEBOX_HOST	Hetzner StorageBox hostname — optional, skip for no backups
IGN8_STORAGEBOX_PASSWORD	Hetzner account → StorageBox details

3. Provision

ign8vault up

Creates a Hetzner VPS, Cloudflare DNS records (vault.<domain> + consul.<domain>), installs Consul + Vault + nginx + TLS, and sets up daily backups. Credentials are saved to .ign8vault/vault-init.json — keep the unseal keys safe.

4. Finish configuration

ign8vault setenv

Re-run setenv to fill in VAULT_ADDR and VAULT_TOKEN from .ign8vault/vault-init.json. Existing values are preserved.

5. Create users (optional)

ign8vault adduser <username>

Creates a Vault userpass account and a scoped SSH-signing token. Use the printed token as VAULT_TOKEN for ign8vault sign.

6. Sign your SSH key

ign8vault sign

Generates an ed25519 keypair in ~/.ssh/signedssh/ and signs it via the Vault SSH CA. Re-run any time to renew (8-hour validity by default).

7. Configure a target host

ign8vault setupsshd --host <ip> --user <user> --password <pw>

Installs the Vault CA public key on the host, reloads sshd, and adds a ~/.ssh/config entry. After this, ssh <alias> works with your signed cert — no passwords, no per-host authorized_keys.

8. Connect

ssh <alias>

Tear down

ign8vault destroy

Deletes the Hetzner server and Cloudflare DNS records.

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Commands

Command	Description
ign8vault up	Provision the full stack
ign8vault adduser <name>	Create a Vault user + SSH-signing token
ign8vault sign	Create/sign the SSH keypair
ign8vault setupsshd	Configure a host to trust the Vault CA
ign8vault setenv	Write Vault env vars to shell profile
ign8vault quickstart	Print this guide in the terminal
ign8vault destroy	Tear it all down

State

All local state is stored in .ign8vault/:

• keys/ — server provisioning SSH keypair
• vault-init.json — root token + unseal keys (chmod 600, keep safe)
• state.json — Hetzner server ID (used by destroy)

Signed SSH keys live in ~/.ssh/signedssh/ and are separate from the provisioning state.

After a reboot

Vault requires 3 of the 5 unseal keys after every restart:

vault operator unseal   # run 3 times with different keys