Manage Passwords

This is part of the Charmed MongoDB K8s Tutorial. Please refer to this page for more information and the overview of the content.

Passwords

When we accessed MongoDB earlier in this tutorial, we needed to include a password in the URI. Passwords help to secure our database and are essential for security. Over time it is a good practice to change the password frequently. Here we will go through setting and changing the password for the admin user.

Retrieve the admin password

As previously mentioned, the admin password can be retrieved by running the get-password action on the Charmed MongoDB application:

juju run  mongodb-k8s/leader get-password

Running the command should output:

Running operation 9 with 1 task
  - task 10 on unit-mongodb-k8s-0

Waiting for task 10...
password: INIsjvJmDsuaPY2Rta0fPzas0zVKO5AJ

The admin password is under the result: password.

Rotate the admin password

You can change the admin password to a new random password by entering:

juju run mongodb-k8s/leader set-password

Running the command should output:

Running operation 11 with 1 task
  - task 12 on unit-mongodb-k8s-0

Waiting for task 12...
password: k4q5M6BiPTA0Dv0sqfNvjKMJMKuJMRbO
secret-id: secret://b6b7e2a1-dae3-414c-8ec1-f9d556356a86/cjkdmkadrh9c74c5u540

The admin password is under the result: password. It should be different from your previous password.

Note: when you change the admin password you will also need to update the admin password the in MongoDB URI; as the old password will no longer be valid. Update the DB password used in the URI and update the URI:

export DB_PASSWORD=$(juju run mongodb-k8s/leader get-password | grep password|  awk '{print $2}')
export URI=mongodb://$DB_USERNAME:$DB_PASSWORD@$HOST_IP:27017/$DB_NAME?replicaSet=$REPL_SET_NAME

Set the admin password

You can change the admin password to a specific password by entering:

juju run mongodb-k8s/leader set-password password=<password>

Running the command should output:

Running operation 15 with 1 task
  - task 16 on unit-mongodb-k8s-0

Waiting for task 16...
password: 1q2w3e4r5t
secret-id: secret://b6b7e2a1-dae3-414c-8ec1-f9d556356a86/cjkdmkadrh9c74c5u540

The admin password under the result: password should match whatever you passed in when you entered the command.

Note: that when you change the admin password you will also need to update the admin password in the MongoDB URI, as the old password will no longer be valid. To update the DB password used in the URI:

export DB_PASSWORD=$(juju run mongodb-k8s/leader get-password | grep password |  awk '{print $2}')
export URI=mongodb://$DB_USERNAME:$DB_PASSWORD@$HOST_IP:27017/$DB_NAME?replicaSet=$REPL_SET_NAME

Next Steps

Charmed MongoDB 5 K8s Tutorial - Relate your MongoDB to other applications