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Matt's Let's Encrypt Automation

yes, let's!

Background

What Is It?

lematt.py is a self-contained certificate management system allowing you to automatically:

  • generate and renew RSA and EC LE certificates
    • including: optional pre-sign triggers per-domain in case you need to start up a web server or punch a hole in a firewall for validation
  • provision certs (and CSRs/keys) concurrently using --parallel
    • provides 600% speedup over operating sequentially
    • provision 50 certificates in 20 seconds (10 workers) instead of 2 minutes (1 worker)
  • provision RSA and EC keys
  • generate RSA and EC CSRs
    • includes full SAN/SNI/UCC capability for up to 100 domain names per cert
  • copy certs and keys to multiple places when renewed
    • unlimited copy destinations can be triggered per domain name (with a default fallback)
      • copy locally
      • copy to any number of remote servers (via rsync)
  • reload services based on the domain(s) inside renewed certs
    • unlimited update triggers can fire based on certificate domain names (with a default fallback)
      • reload local services
      • reload remote services with ssh connections
    • automatically deduplicates service update requests, so if you have 30 web certificates update at the same time, only one reload will be executed.
  • run certificate updates as a dedicated certificate-maint user
    • stop running your updates as root. you know its bad.
  • continuously rotate keys and certificates as fast as every 3.5 days
    • why 3.5 days? Because LE rate limits are 5 duplicate certs per week.
      • requesting 1 RSA cert and 1 EC cert count as 2 rate limit slots, so you can run the full cycle only twice every 7 days, giving us 3.5 days between issues to stay under the rate limits.
      • whether it's wise or safe to always remain at your maximum rate limit capacity is up to you. See config option generateNewCertsAfterDays.
  • end-to-end test your configuration, copy, pre-sign, and post-update actions using the LE staging endpoint with isolated test-specific keys, CSRs, and certs so you don't burn through production rate limits or overwrite production keys and certs with test data.

lematt does not change any part of your system outside of creating new keys, CSRs, and signed certificates, then running triggers up manually specify after updates. You must already have a web server where LE can discover verification challenges under the URI /.well-known/acme-challenge/.

Why Is It?

Consider this a "paying off technical debt" project. My original LE automation was a 40 line shell script looping over domains to generate RSA keys, CSRs, certs from LE, then copying keys/certs and reloading services. The 40 line shell script worked great for two and a half years, but now it has been upgraded to a 800+ line Python program with improved reliability, enhanced functionality, plus general usability across different installations through better config management and stable update triggers.

lematt can:

  • generate RSA and EC keys, CSRs, and request signed certs from LE
  • generate SAN/SNI/UCC CSRs
    • LE allows up to 100 domain names per individual certificate
  • trigger pre-LE-request actions
    • e.g. start a web server on a remote host to accept the challenge, but just for the 3 seconds it takes to validate challenge ownership
  • copy only keys and certs relevant to services on a single machine
  • reload only related services when certs get renewed
  • test against LE staging endpoint with dedicated test directories and test naming for keys, CSRs, and certs to protect against wiping away production keys and certs during testing

How Is It?

Pretty good, thanks for asking.

Usage

For a longer writeup, see Introducing lematt

Running

Run lematt by giving lematt.py one argument of either --test or --prod along with (optional) config filename if you aren't using the default location of conf/.

Configuring

lematt has three config files:

  • lematt.conf describes global options for:
    • how many days before expiration to renew certs
    • your LE account key location
    • directory to place LE challenge verification files
    • how many bits to use for your RSA keys (default: 2048)
    • which curve to use (default: prime256v1 (also known as secp256r1))
  • domains describes which domains to manage:
    • each line will generate a new key and new certificate
    • each line must start with a FQDN the LE server can contact
    • you can add SAN/SNI/UCC domains by just listing them on the same line separated by spaces
    • as shorthand, if you just list a subdomain without any '.', the first domain on the line will be appended to the subdomain (e.g. "mysite.com www" will make one SAN cert for "mysite.com" with altSubjectNames mysite.com,www.mysite.com)
  • actions.conf describes commands to run before and after requesting certs:
    • section [default] applies to any domain without a specific override
    • overrides are any number of named sections you create (not named [default])
      • overrides have a space-separated domains entry
      • any domain updated in the domains entry will trigger the override actions
        • domains: mysite.com mail.mysite.com othersite.org
        • Note: domains only makes sense in an override section. It has no effect under [default].
    • actions for both [default] and override sections are:
      • update - after a certificate is updated, run these commands
        • update: ["service nginx reload", "ssh mailserver-reload"]
      • prepare - before requesting the LE cert, run these commands (useful for starting a temporary web server or opening firewall ports temporarily; command will be killed after cert is issued)
        • prepare: ["ssh mailserver-openport http://central.validator.mysite.com"]
      • uploadCerts - runs when certs are updated or created.
        • CERTS in your commands will be replaced with shell glob patterns
        • uploadCerts: ["rsync -avz CERTS cert-maintainer@mailserver:/etc/ssl/"]
      • uploadKeys - also runs when certs are updated or created.
        • KEYS in your commands will be replaced with shell glob patterns
        • uploadKeys: ["rsync -avz KEYS cert-maintainer@mailserver:/etc/ssl/private/"]

More Docs

For a longer writeup, see Introducing lematt

Included

lematt includes acme_tiny.py and relies on system-provided openssl to generate private keys and CSRs.

Contribute

Things We Could Eventually Do

Want to help? Pick a task, create an issue saying you're working on it, set a deadline for yourself, then post your progress!

  • create (or find) a simple-ish python module to replace our openssl command usage (key generation, CSR generation with SANs) with pyca/cryptography
  • refactor acme_tiny to use pyca/cryptography too (we don't care about the imaginary "stay under 200 lines, even if we have to make them really really really long while removing all easy-to-read visual whitespace" limits).
  • add actions.conf config ability to pick either dns-01 or http-01 challenge methods
    • will require a minimal plugin architecture to talk to DNS APIs (available from other LE clients)
    • DNS API integration would basically fire along side the current prepare hooks, but we need something other than acme_tiny (or a modification of it) to run the request since tiny only requests http challenges.