108 lines
4.2 KiB
Markdown
108 lines
4.2 KiB
Markdown
---
|
|
layout: "docs"
|
|
page_title: "Path Help"
|
|
sidebar_title: "path-help"
|
|
sidebar_current: "docs-commands-path-help"
|
|
description: |-
|
|
The Vault CLI has a built-in help system that can be used to get help for not only the CLI itself, but also any paths that the CLI can be used with within Vault.
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
# Help
|
|
|
|
In addition to standard CLI help using the `-h` or `-help` flag for
|
|
commands, Vault has a built-in `path-help` command that can be used to get
|
|
help for specific paths within Vault. These paths are used with the
|
|
API or `read, write, delete` commands in order to interact with Vault.
|
|
|
|
The help system is the easiest way to learn how to use the various systems
|
|
in Vault, and also allows you to discover new paths.
|
|
|
|
-> **Important!** The help system is incredibly important in day-to-day
|
|
use of Vault. As a beginner or experienced user of Vault, you'll be using
|
|
the help command a lot to remember how to use different components of
|
|
Vault. Note that the Vault Server must be running and the client configured
|
|
properly to execute this command to look up paths.
|
|
|
|
## Discovering Paths
|
|
|
|
Before using `path-help`, it is important to understand "paths" within Vault.
|
|
Paths are the parameters used for `vault read`, `vault write`, etc. An
|
|
example path is `secret/foo`, or `aws/config/root`. The paths available
|
|
depend on the enabled secrets engines. Because of this, the interactive
|
|
help is an indispensable tool to finding what paths are supported.
|
|
|
|
To discover what paths are supported, use `vault path-help <mount point>`.
|
|
For example, if you mounted the AWS secrets engine, you can use
|
|
`vault path-help aws` to find the paths supported by that backend. The paths
|
|
will be shown with regular expressions, which can make them hard to
|
|
parse, but they're also extremely exact.
|
|
|
|
You can try it right away with any Vault with `vault path-help secret`, since
|
|
`secret` is always mounted initially. The output from this command is shown
|
|
below and contains both a description of what that backend is for, along with
|
|
the paths it supports.
|
|
|
|
```
|
|
$ vault path-help secret
|
|
## DESCRIPTION
|
|
|
|
The key/value backend reads and writes arbitrary secrets to the backend.
|
|
The secrets are encrypted/decrypted by Vault: they are never stored
|
|
unencrypted in the backend and the backend never has an opportunity to
|
|
see the unencrypted value.
|
|
|
|
Leases can be set on a per-secret basis. These leases will be sent down
|
|
when that secret is read, and it is assumed that some outside process will
|
|
revoke and/or replace the secret at that path.
|
|
|
|
## PATHS
|
|
|
|
The following paths are supported by this backend. To view help for
|
|
any of the paths below, use the help command with any route matching
|
|
the path pattern. Note that depending on the policy of your auth token,
|
|
you may or may not be able to access certain paths.
|
|
|
|
^.*$
|
|
Pass-through secret storage to the storage backend, allowing you to
|
|
read/write arbitrary data into secret storage.
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
## Single Path
|
|
|
|
Once you've found a path you like, you can learn more about it by
|
|
using `vault path-help <path>` where "path" is a path that matches one of the
|
|
regular expressions from the backend help.
|
|
|
|
Or, if you saw an example online with `vault write` or some similar
|
|
command, you can plug that directly into `vault path-help` to learn about it
|
|
(assuming you have the proper backends mounted!).
|
|
|
|
For example, below we get the help for a single secret in the `secret/`
|
|
mount point. The help shows the operations that that path supports, the
|
|
parameters it takes (for write), and a description of that specific path.
|
|
|
|
```
|
|
$ vault path-help secret/password
|
|
Request: password
|
|
Matching Route: ^.*$
|
|
|
|
Pass-through secret storage to the storage backend, allowing you to
|
|
read/write arbitrary data into secret storage.
|
|
|
|
## PARAMETERS
|
|
|
|
lease (string)
|
|
Lease time for this key when read. Ex: 1h
|
|
|
|
## DESCRIPTION
|
|
|
|
The pass-through backend reads and writes arbitrary data into secret storage,
|
|
encrypting it along the way.
|
|
|
|
A lease can be specified when writing with the "lease" field. If given, then
|
|
when the secret is read, Vault will report a lease with that duration. It
|
|
is expected that the consumer of this backend properly writes renewed keys
|
|
before the lease is up. In addition, revocation must be handled by the
|
|
user of this backend.
|
|
```
|