The ansible-vault command can be used to perform a number of tasks.
Additionally, there are a couple command line options to be aware of.
The ansible-vault create command is used to create an encrypted file. In this example, foo.txt is created.
ansible-vault create foo.txt
You will be prompted to create a new vault password.
New Vault password:
Or, to avoid being prompted for the vault password, you could create a Vault Password file, and then use the --vault-password-file command line option (if you are going to use the same password for all of the ansible-vault commands) . . .
ansible-vault create --vault-password-file /usr/local/vault/.vault_password.txt foo.txt
Or the --vault-id command line option (if you want to use different passwords)
ansible-vault create --vault-id test@/usr/local/ansible/vault/.vault_password.txt foo.txt
The file will open in your default editor. Let's say you enter string "Hello World" and save foo.txt. On a Linux system, foo.txt could have the following owner and permissions. In this example, only john.doe can read and write to foo.txt.
-rw-------. 1 john.doe john.doe 355 Mar 16 18:48 foo.txt
Attempting to view the file using the cat command will display something like this. The ansible-vault view command can be used to view the content of the file (foo.txt in this example).
$ANSIBLE_VAULT;1.1;AES256
66303833643731313633343266616162613965636161313534376563383639646463376630626635
3136316663626536303061333531303234616562323637330a373633393736393863373566623261
65643764336263613730666665663763383063386137383331386136366232666637626566653032
3933393061666138650a656238386665343838613833643435623932306539633138376533613039
6531
If the file was encrypted with a vault id, the vault id (test in this example) will be included.
$ANSIBLE_VAULT;1.1;AES256;test
66303833643731313633343266616162613965636161313534376563383639646463376630626635
3136316663626536303061333531303234616562323637330a373633393736393863373566623261
65643764336263613730666665663763383063386137383331386136366232666637626566653032
3933393061666138650a656238386665343838613833643435623932306539633138376533613039
6531