acertmgr/README.md

ACERTMGR

This is an automated certificate manager using ACME/letsencrypt.

Running ACERTMGR

The main file acertmgr.py is intended to be run regularly (e.g. as daily cron job) as root.

Requirements

• Python (2.7+ and 3.3+ should work)
• python-dateutil
• PyYAML
• pyOpenSSL (0.15.1+)

Initial Setup

First, you need to provide two key files for the ACME protocol:

• The account key is expected at /etc/acme/account.key
• The domain key is expected at /etc/acme/server.key (Note: only one domain key is required for all domains used in the same instance of acertmgr)
• If you are missing these keys, you can create them using openssl genrsa 4096 > /etc/acme/account.key and openssl genrsa 4096 > /etc/acme/server.key respectively
• Do not forget to set proper permissions of the keys using chmod 0400 /etc/acme/*.key

Secondly, you should download the letsencrypt CA certificate:

• wget -O /etc/acme/lets-encrypt-x3-cross-signed.pem https://letsencrypt.org/certs/lets-encrypt-x3-cross-signed.pem
• The path to this file must be entered in the configuration, see examples below

Thirdly, you should decide which challenge mode you want to use with acertmgr:

• webdir: In this mode, challenges are put into a directory, and served by an existing webserver
• standalone: In this mode, challenges are completed by acertmgr directly. This starts a webserver to solve the challenges, which can be used standalone or together with an existing webserver that forwards request to a specified local port
• Make sure that the webdir directory exists in both cases (Note: the standalone webserver does not yet serve the files in situ)

Finally, you need to setup the configuration files, as shown in the next section. While testing, you can use the acme-staging authority instead, in order to avoid issuing too many certificates.

Configuration

The main configuration is read from /etc/acme/acme.conf, domains for which certificates should be obtained/renewed should be configured in /etc/acme/domains.d/*.conf.

All configuration files use yaml syntax.

• Example global configuration file:

---

mode: webdir
#mode: standalone
#port: 13135

# Optional: account_key location. This defaults to "/etc/acme/account.key"
account_key: "/etc/acme/acc.key"
# Optional: server_key location. This defaults to "/etc/acme/server.key"
server_key: "/etc/acme/serv.key"

webdir: /var/www/acme-challenge/
authority: "https://acme-v01.api.letsencrypt.org"
#authority: "https://acme-staging.api.letsencrypt.org"

# settings under this section apply to all domains unless overridden
defaults:
  cafile: /etc/acme/lets-encrypt-x3-cross-signed.pem

• Example domain configuration file:

---

mail.example.com:
- path: /etc/postfix/ssl/mail.key
  user: root
  group: root
  perm: '400'
  format: key
  action: '/etc/init.d/postfix reload'
- path: /etc/postfix/ssl/mail.crt
  user: root
  group: root
  perm: '400'
  format: crt,ca
  action: '/etc/init.d/postfix reload'

jabber.example.com:
- path: /etc/ejabberd/server.pem
  user: jabber
  group: jabber
  perm: '400'
  format: key,crt,ca
  action: '/etc/init.d/ejabberd restart'

# this will create a certificate with subject alternative names
www.example.com example.com:
- path: /var/www/ssl/cert.pem
  user: apache
  group: apache
  perm: '400'
  action: '/etc/init.d/apache2 reload'
  format: crt,ca
- path: /var/www/ssl/key.pem
  user: apache
  group: apache
  perm: '400'
  action: '/etc/init.d/apache2 reload'
  format: key

Security

Please keep the following in mind when using this software:

• DO read the source code, since it has to be run as root
• Make sure that your configuration files are NOT writable by other users - arbitrary commands can be executed after updating certificates