borgmatic/docs/reference/configuration/credentials/container.md

---

title: Container secerts eleventyNavigation: key: • Container

parent: 🔒 Credentials

New in version 1.9.11 When running inside a container, borgmatic can read Docker secrets and Podman secrets. Creating those secrets and passing them into your borgmatic container is outside the scope of this documentation, but here's a simple example of that with Docker Compose:

services:
  borgmatic:
    # Use the actual image name of your borgmatic container here.
    image: borgmatic:latest
    secrets:
      - borgmatic_passphrase
secrets:
  borgmatic_passphrase:
    file: /etc/borgmatic/passphrase.txt

This assumes there's a file on the host at /etc/borgmatic/passphrase.txt containing your passphrase. Docker or Podman mounts the contents of that file into a secret named borgmatic_passphrase in the borgmatic container at /run/secrets/.

Once your container secret is in place, you can consume it within your borgmatic configuration file:

encryption_passphrase: "{credential container borgmatic_passphrase}"

This reads the secret securely from a file mounted at /run/secrets/borgmatic_passphrase within the borgmatic container.

The {credential ...} syntax works for several different options in a borgmatic configuration file besides just encryption_passphrase. For instance, the username, password, and API token options within database and monitoring hooks support {credential ...}:

postgresql_databases:
    - name: invoices
      username: postgres
      password: "{credential container borgmatic_db1}"

You can also optionally override the /run/secrets directory that borgmatic reads secrets from inside a container:

container:
    secrets_directory: /path/to/secrets

But you should only need to do this for development or testing purposes.