How-To Series · 9: Locking It Down

Managed Scope

Pin config and secrets across every user on a machine, where the admin's values win and users cannot override them.

After this videoYou can pin a fleet-wide baseline of config and secrets that standard users cannot change

Managed scope lets an administrator push config and secrets that a standard user cannot override. It is read from a system directory, default /etc/hermes, owned by root: a managed config.yaml and .env that win over the user's files and even the shell environment, for exactly the keys they pin. Filesystem permissions are the enforcement. Merging is leaf-level, hermes config and hermes doctor show what is managed, and v1 is a Linux-first management boundary, not an un-escapable sandbox.

About these resources. This episode explains how to set up managed scope in Hermes. The Sources block names the Hermes docs page that backs every claim.

New words here · Plain English

one sentence each · full glossary
Managed scopeA way for administrators to lock settings and secrets so users on the machine cannot override them.
AdminThe person who manages a computer or server. Managed scope makes admin values win over user values.

Sources · What this video distills

1 docs page · every command below traces to one of them
Primary guide
Managed Scope
Read ↗

Commands shown · Copy and paste

each shows the source doc it came from
Create the managed scope directoryfrom source ↗
sudo mkdir -p /etc/hermes
Set managed file permissionsfrom source ↗
sudo chmod 0644 /etc/hermes/config.yaml /etc/hermes/.env
Verify the resolved managed directoryfrom source ↗
hermes doctor

Going deeper · Related Hermes docs

further reading · not sources of facts shown above

Next in the series · Episodes that build on this