Secure settings

Some settings are sensitive, and relying on filesystem permissions to protect their values is not sufficient. For this use case, Kibana provides a keystore, and the kibana-keystore tool to manage the settings in the keystore.

To create the kibana.keystore, use the create command:

bin/kibana-keystore create

The file kibana.keystore will be created in the config directory defined by the environment variable KBN_PATH_CONF.

A list of the settings in the keystore is available with the list command:

bin/kibana-keystore list

Sensitive string settings, like authentication credentials for Elasticsearch can be added using the add command:

bin/kibana-keystore add the.setting.name.to.set

Once added to the keystore, these setting will be automatically applied to this instance of Kibana when started. For example if you do

bin/kibana-keystore add elasticsearch.username

you will be prompted to provide the value for elasticsearch.username. (Your input will show as asterisks.)

The tool will prompt for the value of the setting. To pass the value through stdin, use the --stdin flag:

cat /file/containing/setting/value | bin/kibana-keystore add the.setting.name.to.set --stdin

To remove a setting from the keystore, use the remove command:

bin/kibana-keystore remove the.setting.name.to.remove