<p>I am currently running Airflow on Kubernetes in Google Cloud GCP.  I based my project off of <a href="https://github.com/puckel/docker-airflow" rel="nofollow noreferrer">docker-airflow</a>.  I am able to start the UI but when I try to create a connection for google cloud and submit the connection I get the following errors.  </p>

<ul>
<li><pre><code>ValueError: Fernet key must be 32 url-safe base64-encoded bytes.
</code></pre></li>
<li><pre><code>[2018-09-21 19:45:13,345] AirflowException: Could not create Fernet object: Fernet key must be 32 url-safe base64-encoded bytes.
</code></pre></li>
</ul>

<p>The first issue the docs recommend is to make sure you have cryptography installed, which I do.  I installed both types, the one that comes with airflow and the standard one from PyPi. </p>

<pre><code>pip3 install apache-airflow[kubernetes,crypto] and also tried
pip install cryptography
</code></pre>

<p>I tried to run the commands for generating and storing env variables as explained in the documentation, found <a href="https://bcb.github.io/airflow/fernet-key" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a>. (and shown below) </p>

<p>1) <strong>Either generate a fernet key manually and add to airflow.cfg</strong></p>

<p>2) <strong>Set the environment variable and restarting the server.</strong></p>

<pre><code>python -c "from cryptography.fernet import Fernet; 
print(Fernet.generate_key().decode())"
</code></pre>

<p>Example Key:<code>81HqDtbqAywKSOumSha3BhWNOdQ26slT6K0YaZeZyPs=</code></p>

<p>Using kubernetes I am unable to restart the server using the typical method of shutting down the process ID since its tied to the container.  I also tried putting a generated key (above) in the configmaps.yaml file of the kubernetes cluster (equal to airflow.cfg when deployed). </p>

<p>I tried running the GCP connection through DAG, via the UI, and manually by using the airflow command line client. All three methods returned the same error.  I am including a picture of the UI submission here along with the full stack-trace. </p>

<h3>Question</h3>

<ul>
<li>Why might this be happening?  Is the fernet key not being generated? Is it not being saved on the underlying volume maybe?*</li>
</ul>

<p>Thanks for the help.</p>

<p>-RR</p>

<pre><code>Traceback (most recent call last):

File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/airflow/models.py", line 159, in get_fernet
_fernet = Fernet(configuration.conf.get('core', 'FERNET_KEY').encode('utf-8'))
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/cryptography/fernet.py", line 37, in __init__
"Fernet key must be 32 url-safe base64-encoded bytes."
ValueError: Fernet key must be 32 url-safe base64-encoded bytes.

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/flask/app.py", line 1982, in wsgi_app
  response = self.full_dispatch_request()
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/flask/app.py", line 1614, in full_dispatch_request
  rv = self.handle_user_exception(e)
    File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/flask/app.py", line 1517, in handle_user_exception
  reraise(exc_type, exc_value, tb)
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/flask/_compat.py", line 33, in reraise
  raise value
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/flask/app.py", line 1612, in full_dispatch_request
  rv = self.dispatch_request()
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/flask/app.py", line 1598, in dispatch_request
  return self.view_functions[rule.endpoint](**req.view_args)
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/flask_appbuilder/security/decorators.py", line 26, in wraps
  return f(self, *args, **kwargs)
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/flask_appbuilder/views.py", line 524, in edit
  widgets = self._edit(pk)
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/flask_appbuilder/baseviews.py", line 965, in _edit
  form.populate_obj(item)
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/wtforms/form.py", line 96, in populate_obj
  field.populate_obj(obj, name)
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/wtforms/fields/core.py", line 330, in populate_obj
  setattr(obj, name, self.data)
File "&lt;string&gt;", line 1, in __set__
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/airflow/models.py", line 731, in set_extra
  fernet = get_fernet()
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/airflow/models.py", line 163, in get_fernet
raise AirflowException("Could not create Fernet object: {}".format(ve))
airflow.exceptions.AirflowException: Could not create Fernet object: 
Fernet key must be 32 url-safe base64-encoded bytes.
</code></pre>

<p>This is the YAML for the underlying persisted volumes. </p>

<pre><code>kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: airflow-dags
  namespace: data
spec:
  accessModes:
    - ReadOnlyMany
  storageClassName: standard    
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 8Gi
---
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: airflow-logs
  namespace: data
spec:
  accessModes:
    - ReadOnlyMany
  storageClassName: standard    
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 8Gi
</code></pre>

<p>This is the airflow configuration YAML. </p>

<pre><code>apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: airflow
  namespace: data
  labels:
    name: airflow
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      name: airflow
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        name: airflow
    spec:
      serviceAccountName: spark-service-account
      automountServiceAccountToken: true
      initContainers:
      - name: "init"
        image: &lt;image_name&gt;
        imagePullPolicy: Always
        volumeMounts:
        - name: airflow-configmap
          mountPath: /root/airflow/airflow.cfg
          subPath: airflow.cfg
        - name: airflow-dags
          mountPath: /root/airflow/dags
        # - name: test-volume
        #   mountPath: /root/test_volume
        env:
        - name: SQL_ALCHEMY_CONN
          valueFrom:
            secretKeyRef:
              name: airflow-secrets
              key: sql_alchemy_conn
        command:
          - "bash"
        args:
          - "-cx"
          - "airflow initdb || true &amp;&amp; airflow create_user -u airflow -l airflow -f jon -e airflow@apache.org -r Admin -p airflow || true"
      containers:
      - name: webserver
        image: &lt;image_name&gt;
        imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
        ports:
        - name: webserver
          containerPort: 8080
        env:
        - name: &lt;namespace_name&gt;
          valueFrom:
            fieldRef:
              fieldPath: metadata.namespace
        - name: SQL_ALCHEMY_CONN
          valueFrom:
            secretKeyRef:
              name: airflow-secrets
              key: sql_alchemy_conn
        command: ["/bin/sh", "-c"]
        args: ["airflow webserver"]
        volumeMounts:
        - name: airflow-configmap
          mountPath: /root/airflow/airflow.cfg
          subPath: airflow.cfg
        - name: airflow-dags
          mountPath: /root/airflow/dags
        - name: airflow-logs
          mountPath: /root/airflow/logs
        # readinessProbe:
        #   initialDelaySeconds: 5
        #   timeoutSeconds: 5
        #   periodSeconds: 5
        #   httpGet:
        #     path: /login
        #     port: 8080
        # livenessProbe:
        #   initialDelaySeconds: 5
        #   timeoutSeconds: 5
        #   failureThreshold: 5
        #   httpGet:
        #     path: /login
        #     port: 8080
      - name: scheduler
        image: image-name
        imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
        env:
        - name: namespace_name
          valueFrom:
            fieldRef:
              fieldPath: metadata.namespace
        - name: SQL_ALCHEMY_CONN
          valueFrom:
            secretKeyRef:
              name: airflow-secrets
              key: sql_alchemy_conn
        command: ["/bin/sh", "-c"]
        args: ["cp ./dags/* /root/airflow/dags/; airflow scheduler"]
        volumeMounts:
        - name: airflow-configmap
          mountPath: /root/airflow/airflow.cfg
          subPath: airflow.cfg
        - name: airflow-dags
          mountPath: /root/airflow/dags
        - name: airflow-logs
          mountPath: /root/airflow/logs
      volumes:
      - name: airflow-configmap
        configMap:
          name: airflow-configmap
      - name: airflow-dags
        persistentVolumeClaim:
          claimName: airflow-dags
      - name: airflow-logs
        persistentVolumeClaim:
          claimName: airflow-logs
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: airflow
  namespace: data
spec:
  type: NodePort
  ports:
    - port: 8080
      nodePort: 30809
  selector:
    name: airflow
</code></pre>

<p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/nJiNu.png" alt="UI"></p>

<p>Restart the worker and webserver.</p>

<p>Your worker and webserver are operating on the old fernet key. You changed the key in your config, so all your newly stored or modified Connections will use the new key, but the webserver/worker are still operating on the old key. They will never match and continue to give this error, till they're restarted. </p>
