---
layout: docs
page_title: Vault Agent and Vault Proxy Auto-Auth File Sink
description: File sink for Auto-Auth
---

# Vault agent and Vault proxy Auto-Auth file sink

The `file` sink writes tokens, optionally response-wrapped and/or encrypted, to
a file. This may be a local file or a file mapped via some other process (NFS,
Gluster, CIFS, etc.).

Once the sink writes the file, it is up to the client to control lifecycle;
generally it is best for the client to remove the file as soon as it is seen.

It is also best practice to write the file to a ramdisk, ideally an encrypted
ramdisk, and use appropriate filesystem permissions. The file is currently
written with `0640` permissions as default, but can be overridden with the optional
'mode' setting.

## Configuration

- `path` `(string: required)` - The path to use to write the token file
- `mode` `(int: optional)` - A string containing an octal number representing the bit pattern for the file mode, similar to chmod. Set to `0000` to prevent Vault from modifying the file mode. Note: This configuration option is only available in Vault 1.3.0 and above.

~> Note: Configuration options for response-wrapping and encryption for the sink
file are located within the [options common to all sinks](/vault/docs/agent-and-proxy/autoauth#configuration-sinks) documentation.
