Migrating vaultwarden to nixos
2023-12-20 - How I migrated my vaultwarden installation to nixos
Tags: nix vaultwarden
Introduction
I am migrating several services from a k3s kubernetes cluster to a nixos server. Here is how I performed the operation with my vaultwarden password manager.
Vaultwarden with nixos
Vaultwarden is packaged on nixos, but I am used to the hosting the container image and upgrading it at my own pace so I am sticking with it for now.
Here is the module I wrote to deploy a vaultwarden container, configure postgresql and borg backups in apps/vaultwarden/app.nix:
{ config, lib, pkgs, ... }:
{
imports = [
../../lib/nginx.nix
../../lib/postgresql.nix
];
environment.etc = {
"borg-vaultwarden-db.key" = {
mode = "0400";
source = ./borg-db.key;
};
"borg-vaultwarden-storage.key" = {
mode = "0400";
source = ./borg-storage.key;
};
};
services = {
borgbackup.jobs = let defaults = {
compression = "auto,zstd";
doInit = true;
encryption.mode = "none";
prune.keep = {
daily = 14;
weekly = 4;
monthly = 3;
};
startAt = "daily";
}; in {
"vaultwarden-db" = defaults // {
environment.BORG_RSH = "ssh -i /etc/borg-vaultwarden-db.key";
paths = "/tmp/vaultwarden.sql";
postHook = "rm -f /tmp/vaultwarden.sql";
preHook = ''rm -f /tmp/vaultwarden.sql; /run/current-system/sw/bin/pg_dump -h localhost -U vaultwarden -d vaultwarden > /tmp/vaultwarden.sql'';
repo = "ssh://borg@gcp.adyxax.org/srv/borg/vaultwarden-db";
};
"vaultwarden-storage" = defaults // {
environment.BORG_RSH = "ssh -i /etc/borg-vaultwarden-storage.key";
paths = "/srv/vaultwarden";
repo = "ssh://borg@gcp.adyxax.org/srv/borg/vaultwarden-storage";
};
};
nginx.virtualHosts = let commons = {
forceSSL = true;
locations = {
"/" = {
proxyPass = "http://127.0.0.1:8083";
};
};
}; in {
"pass.adyxax.org" = commons // {
sslCertificate = "/etc/nginx/adyxax.org.crt";
sslCertificateKey = "/etc/nginx/adyxax.org.key";
};
};
postgresql = {
ensureUsers = [{
name = "vaultwarden";
ensureDBOwnership = true;
}];
ensureDatabases = ["vaultwarden"];
};
};
virtualisation.oci-containers.containers = {
vaultwarden = {
environment = {
ADMIN_TOKEN = builtins.readFile ./argon-token.key;
DATABASE_MAX_CONNS = "2";
DATABASE_URL = "postgres://vaultwarden:" + (lib.removeSuffix "\n" (builtins.readFile ./database-password.key)) + "@10.88.0.1/vaultwarden?sslmode=disable";
};
image = "vaultwarden/server:1.30.1";
ports = ["127.0.0.1:8083:80"];
volumes = [ "/srv/vaultwarden/:/data" ];
};
};
}
Dependencies
Borg
Borg needs to be running on another server with the following configuration stored in my apps/vaultwarden/borg.nix file:
{ config, pkgs, ... }:
{
imports = [
../../lib/borg.nix
];
users.users.borg.openssh.authorizedKeys.keys = [
("command=\"borg serve --restrict-to-path /srv/borg/vaultwarden-db\",restrict " + (builtins.readFile ./borg-db.key.pub))
("command=\"borg serve --restrict-to-path /srv/borg/vaultwarden-storage\",restrict " + (builtins.readFile ./borg-storage.key.pub))
];
}
PostgreSQL
My postgreSQL module defines the following global configuration:
{ config, lib, pkgs, ... }:
{
networking.firewall.interfaces."podman0".allowedTCPPorts = [ 5432 ];
services.postgresql = {
enable = true;
enableTCPIP = true;
package = pkgs.postgresql_15;
authentication = pkgs.lib.mkOverride 10 ''
#type database DBuser auth-method
local all all trust
# podman
host all all 10.88.0.0/16 scram-sha-256
'';
};
}
Since for now I am running nothing outside of containers on this server, I am trusting the unix socket connections. Depending on what you are doing you might want a stronger auth-method there.
Nginx
My nginx module defines the following global configuration:
{ config, lib, pkgs, ... }:
{
environment.etc = let permissions = { mode = "0400"; uid= config.ids.uids.nginx; }; in {
"nginx/adyxax.org.crt" = permissions // { source = ../../01-legacy/adyxax.org.crt; };
"nginx/adyxax.org.key" = permissions // { source = ../../01-legacy/adyxax.org.key; };
};
networking.firewall.allowedTCPPorts = [ 80 443 ];
services.nginx = {
clientMaxBodySize = "40M";
enable = true;
enableReload = true;
recommendedGzipSettings = true;
recommendedOptimisation = true;
recommendedProxySettings = true;
};
}
Secrets
There are several secrets referenced in the configuration, these are all git-crypted files:
- argon-token.key
- borg-db.key
- borg-storage.key
- database-password.key
Migration process
The first step is obviously to deploy this new configuration to the server, then I need to login and manually restore the backups.
make run host=myth.adyxax.org
The container will be failing because no password is set on the database user yet, so I stop it:
systemctl stop podman-vaultwarden
There are two backup jobs for vaultwarden: one for its storage and the second one for the database.
export BORG_RSH="ssh -i /etc/borg-vaultwarden-storage.key"
borg list ssh://borg@gcp.adyxax.org/srv/borg/vaultwarden-storage
borg extract ssh://borg@gcp.adyxax.org/srv/borg/vaultwarden-storage::dalinar-vaultwarden-storage-2023-11-19T00:00:01
mv srv/vaultwarden /srv/
export BORG_RSH="ssh -i /etc/borg-vaultwarden-db.key"
borg list ssh://borg@gcp.adyxax.org/srv/borg/vaultwarden-db
borg extract ssh://borg@gcp.adyxax.org/srv/borg/vaultwarden-db::dalinar-vaultwarden-db-2023-11-19T00:00:01
psql -h localhost -U postgres -d vaultwarden
Restoring the data itself is done with the psql shell:
ALTER USER vaultwarden WITH PASSWORD 'XXXXX';
\i tmp/vaultwarden.sql
Afterwards I clean up the database dump and restart vaultwarden:
rm -rf tmp/
systemctl start podman-vaultwarden
To wrap this up I migrate the DNS records to the new host, update my monitoring system and clean up the namespace on the k3s server.
Conclusion
Automating things with nixos is satisfying, but it does not abstract all the sysadmin’s work away.
I am not quite satisfied with my borg configuration entries. I should be able to write this more elegantly when I find the time, but it works.