open-vault/website/content/docs/plugins/plugin-management.mdx

70 lines
2.2 KiB
Plaintext

---
layout: docs
page_title: Plugin Management
description: >-
External Plugins are mountable backends that are implemented using Vault's
plugin system.
---
# Plugin Management
External plugins are the components in Vault that can be implemented separately
from Vault's built-in plugins. These plugins can be either authentication or
secrets engines.
The [`api_addr`][api_addr] must be set in order for the plugin process to
establish communication with the Vault server during mount time. If the storage
backend has HA enabled and supports automatic host address detection (e.g.
Consul), Vault will automatically attempt to determine the `api_addr` as well.
Detailed information regarding the plugin system can be found in the
[internals documentation](/docs/plugins).
## Registering External Plugins
Before an external plugin can be mounted, it needs to be
[registered](/docs/plugins/plugin-architecture#plugin-registration) in the
plugin catalog to ensure the plugin invoked by Vault is authentic and maintains
integrity:
```shell-session
$ vault plugin register -sha256=<SHA256 Hex value of the plugin binary> \
secret \ # type
my-secrets
Success! Registered plugin: myplugin-database-plugin
```
## Enabling/Disabling External Plugins
After the plugin is registered, it can be mounted by specifying the registered
plugin name:
```shell-session
$ vault secrets enable -path=my-secrets passthrough-plugin
Success! Enabled the passthrough-plugin secrets engine at: my-secrets/
```
Listing secrets engines will display secrets engines that are mounted as
plugins:
```shell-session
$ vault secrets list
Path Type Accessor Plugin Default TTL Max TTL Force No Cache Replication Behavior Description
my-secrets/ plugin plugin_deb84140 passthrough-plugin system system false replicated
```
Disabling an external plugins is identical to disabling a built-in plugin:
```shell-session
$ vault secrets disable my-secrets
```
## Upgrading Plugins
Upgrade instructions can be found in the [Upgrading Plugins - Guides][upgrading_plugins]
page.
[api_addr]: /docs/configuration#api_addr
[upgrading_plugins]: /docs/upgrading/plugins