Decrypt an Ansible Vault - ansible vault

How to decrypt an Ansible vault file using the ansible-vault command line utility.

November 13, 2022

How to decrypt an Ansible Vault?

From an encrypted file to plaintext using the correct password. I will show you a live demo with some simple Ansible code. I’m Luca Berton, and welcome to today’s episode of Ansible Pilot.

ansible-vault

• Included in Ansible installation
• Ansible Vault
• command line

The ansible-vault command is included in every Ansible installation for the most modern operating system. It is a command line tool so interact with that using your terminal. Using the ansible-vault command, you could perform any Ansible vault operation: encryption, decryption, change of password, etc.

Links

• https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/user_guide/vault.html

The Best Resources For Ansible

Video Course

• Learn Ansible Automation in 250+examples & practical lessons: Learn Ansible with some real-life examples of how to use the most common modules and Ansible Playbook

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eBooks

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demo

I will show you how to decrypt an Ansible Vault using the ansible-vault command line utility. At the beginning of this example, we start with an encrypted Ansible vault, and once we enter the correct password, we obtain a cleartext file.

execution

$ ansible-vault decrypt encrypted-to-plain.yml 
Vault password: 
Decryption successful

before execution

$ cat encrypted-to-plain.yml 
$ANSIBLE_VAULT;1.1;AES256
65333637643363376438633838346563353666636433613032333663666137613839333564393238
3930333031633134346461303636623937353561643464390a363534383938396336346130653231
34356437363733313638336437343735366362343031663866326135633538373237646537356638
6163373837343332660a323666666534353561656464353033613137333463316534663062643561
34373865636163626163313235393239653539356665373361373939633138373137643264386533
3761646565643732396531313561366364353031373731353839

after execution

$ cat encrypted-to-plain.yml 
---
password: mysupersecretpassword

Recap

Now you know how to decrypt an Ansible Vault.

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