Overview

This page contains the list of breaking changes for Vault 0.6.1. Please read it carefully.

Standby Nodes Must Be 0.6.1 As Well

Once an active node is running 0.6.1, only standby nodes running 0.6.1+ will be able to form an HA cluster. If following our general upgrade instructions this will not be an issue.

Health Endpoint Status Code Changes

Prior to 0.6.1, the health endpoint would return a 500 (Internal Server Error) for both a sealed and uninitialized state. In both states this was confusing, since it was hard to tell, based on the status code, an actual internal error from Vault from a Vault that was simply uninitialized or sealed, not to mention differentiating between those two states.

In 0.6.1, a sealed Vault will return a 503 (Service Unavailable) status code. As before, this can be adjusted with the sealedcode query parameter. An uninitialized Vault will return a 501 (Not Implemented) status code. This can be adjusted with the uninitcode query parameter.

This removes ambiguity/confusion and falls more in line with the intention of each status code (including 500).

Root Token Creation Restrictions

Root tokens (tokens with the root policy) can no longer be created except by another root token or the generate-root endpoint or CLI command.

PKI Backend Certificates Will Contain Default Key Usages

Issued certificates from the pki backend against roles created or modified after upgrading will contain a set of default key usages. This increases compatibility with some software that requires strict adherence to RFCs, such as OpenVPN.

This behavior is fully adjustable; see the PKI backend documentation for details.

DynamoDB Does Not Support HA By Default

If using DynamoDB and want to use HA support, you will need to explicitly enable it in Vault's configuration; see the documentation for details.

If you are already using DynamoDB in an HA fashion and wish to keep doing so, it is very important that you set this option before upgrading your Vault instances. Without doing so, each Vault instance will believe that it is standalone and there could be consistency issues.

LDAP Auth Method Forgets Bind Password and Insecure TLS Settings

Due to a bug, these two settings are forgotten if they have been configured in the LDAP backend prior to 0.6.1. If you are using these settings with LDAP, please be sure to re-submit your LDAP configuration to Vault after the upgrade, so ensure that you have a valid token to do so before upgrading if you are relying on LDAP authentication for permissions to modify the backend itself.

LDAP Auth Method Does Not Search memberOf

The LDAP backend went from a model where all permutations of storing and filtering groups were tried in all cases to one where specific filters are defined by the administrator. This vastly increases overall directory compatibility, especially with Active Directory when using nested groups, but unfortunately has the side effect that memberOf is no longer searched for by default, which is a breaking change for many existing setups.

Scenario 2 in the updated documentation shows an example of configuring the backend to query memberOf. It is recommended that a test Vault server be set up and that successful authentication can be performed using the new configuration before upgrading a primary or production Vault instance.

In addition, if LDAP is relied upon for authentication, operators should ensure that they have valid tokens with policies allowing modification of LDAP parameters before upgrading, so that once an upgrade is performed, the new configuration can be specified successfully.

App-ID is Deprecated

With the addition of of the new AppRole backend, App-ID is deprecated. There are no current plans to remove it, but we encourage using AppRole whenever possible, as it offers enhanced functionality and can accommodate many more types of authentication paradigms. App-ID will receive security-related fixes only.