A SecretID cannot be renewed the way a token can -- it must be re-issued by a
privileged caller -- so renew-app-tokens.sh structurally could not cover it.
The original expired on ~2026-07-28 and broke app-get-secret.sh silently until
it was noticed on 2026-08-22. This closes the last credential in the stack
that had no automated lifecycle.
Weekly against a 30d secret_id_ttl gives 4x margin: three consecutive failed
rotations can occur before anything actually breaks, and the first failure
already mails an alert via OnFailure=openbao-alert@%n.service.
Order of operations is the safety property: mint -> verify the new SecretID
actually authenticates -> only then overwrite the file -> only then prune old
accessors. Any failure leaves the previous working credential in place and
exits non-zero. Verified by pointing BAO_ADDR at a dead port: exit 1, file
byte-identical, consumer unaffected. A SecretID that fails its verification
login is destroyed rather than installed.
Accessors are kept one cycle deep (KEEP=2: current + previous) so a consumer
that read the file just before rotation can still log in. Verified across
three consecutive runs: steady state stays at 2, oldest pruned each cycle.
The rotator skips its verification login when secret_id_num_uses would be
consumed by it, which is why the policy grants read on the role config. That
read exposes TTLs and bound policies but NOT the RoleID, which lives at the
separate .../role-id path and stays denied -- verified 403, along with 403 on
the demo secret itself and on other AppRoles.
Token at /etc/openbao-approle-rotate.token matches the /etc/openbao-*.token
glob, so the renew loop picks it up automatically (verified: renewed=10
failed=0) and it cannot lapse the way the backup tokens did.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01NFtVLA7VVqXL5G2S18c4Jk
Lutz Finsterle
471692c283