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 3.4+ should work)
• python-dateutil
• PyYAML
• acme_tiny (acme_tiny.py in $PYTHONHOME or $PYTHONPATH or placed next to acertmgr.py)

Initial Setup

First, you need to provide two key files for acme-tiny:

• 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. Otherwise refer to the acme-timy documentation for how to reuse your existing keys.

Second, 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. Make sure the target directory exists!
• 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.

Finally, you need to setup the configuration files, as shown in the next section.

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/{fqdn}.conf.

All configuration files use yaml syntax.

• Example global configuration file:

---

mode: webdir
#mode: standalone
#port: 13135
webdir: /var/www/acme-challenge/

defaults:
  format: crt

• Example domain configuration file:

---

mail.example.com:
- path: /etc/postfix/ssl/mail.crt
  user: postfix
  group: postfix
  perm: '400'
  notify: '/etc/init.d/postfix reload'
- path: /etc/dovecot/ssl/mail.crt
  user: dovecot
  group: dovecot
  perm: '400'
  notify: '/etc/init.d/dovecot reload'

Security

Please keep the following in mind when using this software:

• DO read the source code, since it is intended 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