Storing Kamal secrets in AWS Secrets Manager and deploying to a cheap Hetzner VPS
The article discusses how to securely store API keys using AWS Secrets Manager while deploying applications with Kamal on a Hetzner VPS. It highlights the importance of avoiding plaintext secrets for compliance with regulations like SOC 2 and GDPR. The author provides a step-by-step guide for setting up the necessary configurations and permissions.
- ▪Kamal is a deployment tool that, by default, stores secrets in plaintext files, which poses security risks.
- ▪Using AWS Secrets Manager allows for secure storage of API keys and compliance with regulations.
- ▪The author outlines steps for configuring a Hetzner VPS and integrating it with AWS Secrets Manager.
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| Original publisher | DEV.to (Top) |
| Canonical URL | https://dev.to/godsloveady/storing-kamal-secrets-in-aws-secrets-manager-and-deploying-to-a-cheap-hetzner-vps-2262 |
| Publication time | Sat, 23 May 2026 11:48:51 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-23T12:07:26.436Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-23T12:07:26.436Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | 2CT99CKivALv |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
try { if(localStorage) { let currentUser = localStorage.getItem('current_user'); if (currentUser) { currentUser = JSON.parse(currentUser); if (currentUser.id === 375077) { document.getElementById('article-show-container').classList.add('current-user-is-article-author'); } } } } catch (e) { console.error(e); } Derrick Amenuve Posted on May 23 Storing Kamal secrets in AWS Secrets Manager and deploying to a cheap Hetzner VPS #rails #kamal #devops #deployment I ran into a problem with Kamal. My .kamal/secrets file was full of API keys sitting in plaintext on my laptop. Anyone with access could read them all. TLDR; Use Kamal with AWS Secrets Manager and deploy to a Hetzner VPS. No plaintext secrets, cheap hosting, compliance happy. The problem Kamal is great for deploying apps.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at DEV.to (Top).
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