This complements the `env` parameter, so that the operator can author
tasks that don't share their Vault token with the workload when using
`image` filesystem isolation. As a result, more powerful tokens can be used
in a job definition, allowing it to use template stanzas to issue all kinds of
secrets (database secrets, Vault tokens with very specific policies, etc.),
without sharing that issuing power with the task itself.
This is accomplished by creating a directory called `private` within
the task's working directory, which shares many properties of
the `secrets` directory (tmpfs where possible, not accessible by
`nomad alloc fs` or Nomad's web UI), but isn't mounted into/bound to the
container.
If the `disable_file` parameter is set to `false` (its default), the Vault token
is also written to the NOMAD_SECRETS_DIR, so the default behavior is
backwards compatible. Even if the operator never changes the default,
they will still benefit from the improved behavior of Nomad never reading
the token back in from that - potentially altered - location.
When a Nomad agent starts and loads jobs that already existed in the
cluster, the default template uid and gid was being set to 0, since this
is the zero value for int. This caused these jobs to fail in
environments where it was not possible to use 0, such as in Windows
clients.
In order to differentiate between an explicit 0 and a template where
these properties were not set we need to use a pointer.
UID/GID 0 is usually reserved for the root user/group. While Nomad
clients are expected to run as root it may not always be the case.
Setting these values as -1 if not defined will fallback to the pervious
behaviour of not attempting to set file ownership and use whatever
UID/GID the Nomad agent is running as. It will also keep backwards
compatibility, which is specially important for platforms where this
feature is not supported, like Windows.
hc-github-team-nomad-core