Sentinel, A Policy That Passes, Fails And Tests
sentinel on EL 10 from releases.hashicorp.com; SHA256SUMS is signature-checked against HashiCorp's key before get_url trusts it, the live test re-checks both, then applies a policy with a passing value (Pass, exit 0) and a failing one (Fail with trace, exit 1), runs sentinel test (PASS) and has fmt -check flag an unformatted file. Pinned. Original role, live-tested on Rocky Linux 10.
Verification
Live-testedReally deployed to a container sandbox, proven idempotent (a second run changes nothing), verified against the role’s assertions, then torn down.
Conformance
- Static validation (yamllint · ansible-lint)
Provenance
- SHA-256 checksum
- Signature (pending)
Functional
- Live-tested - applied, verified, destroyed
Last verified 2026-09-21 · podman 4.9.3 · ansible 2.21.4 · how we verify
Documentation
sentinel
HashiCorp sentinel on EL 10 from the vendor's release, checked against the
published SHA-256 and the vendor's signature on it, pinned to a version, installed as root's binary
in /usr/local/bin. Original role for EL 10, live-tested with podman on
Rocky Linux 10.
No package worth the name. EL 10 carries no sentinel, and a
third-party repository is one more key to trust. This role takes the
release from releases.hashicorp.com, has Ansible's get_url refuse the asset unless
its SHA-256 is the published one, and the live test checks the asset on
disk against the same published value again.
The checksum file is signed, and the signature is checked first. HashiCorp Security
signs sentinel_0.41.0_SHA256SUMS; the role ships HashiCorp Security's public key
(C874 011F 0AB4 0511 0D02 1055 3436 5D94 72D7 468F), imports it into a GnuPG home of its own under
/usr/local/src, asserts that fingerprint, and verifies the signature
before get_url is allowed to trust the file. The live test re-verifies
the signature and asserts the home holds exactly the expected key(s).
Pinned. sentinel_version is what gets installed, kept in a directory
of its own so the checksum file and the asset it names stay together. A
newer release is a variable change and a run; the same version is
changed=0.
Proven to run. The live test runs sentinel apply -global instance_type=t3.micro /tmp/sentinel-p/policy.sentinel and expects
"Pass - " - the binary ran all the way to the point where it
needed something this host does not have.
A policy that passes, fails, and tests. The live test writes a
policy that allows two instance types, applies it with a passing value
("Pass - policy.sentinel", rc 0) and a failing one ("Fail - ", rc 1,
with the rule trace), runs sentinel test against a test case ("PASS -
"), and has fmt -check flag an unformatted file. Sentinel reads any
*.hcl in its working directory as configuration, so the test runs from
a directory of its own. The zip ships EULA.txt and TermsOfEvaluation.txt:
the CLI is for writing and testing policies; enforcement runs inside HCP
Terraform, Terraform Enterprise, Vault Enterprise and Nomad Enterprise.
License
Commercial - IaC Bazaar EULA. (c) IaC Bazaar.
Usage code & full reference need an account
The complete copy-paste usage, the full input/output reference, and operational notes are free with an account - shown here and bundled in the download. Sign in and this section fills in.
- Variables
- Test
Related modules
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