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Letsencrypt

Initially configures self-signed certificates and generates scripts to migrate to LetsEncrypt certificates on any webserver or certificate-requiring HTTP-based software. The webserver/software will need to be configured to use the certificates, chains, and keys in /etc/letsencrypt/live/<domain>/{chain,privkey,cert}.pem

When you're ready to switch over to LetsEncrypt, just run the templated migration script for the vhost as root. It is built to handle failure, and will backup the certificates, chains, and keys and restore them if anything goes wrong.

This role is currently best used on low-traffic webserving stacks where SSL/TLS and webserving are on the same machine. It was created because we usually only run ansible against our managed servers when a change is made, so using the included ACME modules was not a good option. We wanted the option to create self-signed certificates at first then migrate to LetsEncrypt easily during client webapp migrations.

This role only supports the http-01 ACME challenge. It has been tested on Centos7 and Ubuntu18.04. It will probably work on all RHEL and most Debian-based distributions.

Software Dependencies

The only hard dependency for this role is pip. It is used to install docker-compose and certbot.

Optionally, docker and docker-compose are dependencies if you want to manage those yourself. You might want to do this if you're running containers and install a specific version of docker and docker-compose. If this is the case, set le_manage_docker to false and this role will not try to install docker and docker-compose. This is only relevant if you're running in testing mode, with le_testing set to true.

Usage

This role sets up self-signed certificate, key, and chain files for each virtual host that is defined in the le_hosts variable. Then, it generates a "migration script" for each vhost that can be ran once DNS is updated or the .acme-challenge routes are proxied to the machine this is ran against. This role can be used with any webserver or software that needs certificates to run properly. Set le_webserver_service to whatever service you want to restart after installing self-signed or LetsEncrypt certificates.

le_hosts:
  - domain: mywebsite.mydomain
    directory: /var/www/mywebsite.mydomain

If you have an Nginx server that receives requests for the domain mywebsite.mydomain with mywebsite.mydomain/ serving files from /var/www/mywebsite.mydomain, you'd set le_hosts like this.

The directory for each host needs to match the path that requests to / go to for that particular domain. If this is wrong, the ACME challenge will fail.

In the case of the above example, the tag1-letsencrypt role will read the le_hosts variable to create the following changes on the VM:

  • Spin up a mock ACME server (if le_testing==true)
  • Puts a certificate at /etc/letsencrypt/live/mywebsite.mydomain/cert.pem
  • Puts a private key at /etc/letsencrypt/live/mywebsite.mydomain/privkey.pem
  • Puts a bogus chain at /etc/letsencrypt/live/mywebsite.mydomain/chain.pem
  • Generates a script at /root/migrate-mywebsite.mydomain.sh which will do the following in order:
    • Check if the webserver is currently running properly. If not, exit
    • Backup all certificates to /root/letsencrypt
    • Perform a dry-run with LetsEncrypt production servers, or skips the dry run if there is a local ACME testing server
      • Exits script if it fails
    • Perform a real ACME client run (there is a hook that deletes the self-signed certs, which is why the backup is needed)
      • Uses local testing server if it is present
      • Uses LetsEncrypt production servers if there is no local testing server
    • Reloads webserver serivce
      • Restores /etc/letsencrypt from backup if the reload fails then reloads the webserver again

Role Variables

Variables Description Default Required
le_admin_mailto Email address for LetsEncrypt to send notices about protocol changes and expiry notices root Yes
le_certbot_venv Path to python virtualenv that contains certbot and its dependencies /root/.certbot_virtualenv No
le_hosts List of hosts to generate self-signed certs and migration scripts for. This array of hashes only needs to have the domain and directory variables set. See the example playbook. None Yes
le_manage_docker Whether to install docker in this role or not. Docker is only installed for the test acme server when le_testing is true true No
le_migrate_script_basepath Directory to store the migration scripts. /root/ No
le_migrate_script_prefix Prefix to script filenames. migrate No
le_selfsign_base_dir Directory to store all files related to self-signing certificates. /etc/ssl/ No
le_selfsign_key_name Name of file in le_selfsign_base_dir to do all signing with. self-sign-root.pem No
le_selfsign_chain_name Name of chain file in le_selfsign_base_dir. It contains no private information. fake-chain.pem No
le_testing Determines whether a acme testing server gets stood up. false No
le_testing_dir Path to clone ACME server code. /tmp/boulder No
le_webserver_service Name of systemd unit to reload after acme challenge. httpd on RHEL/CentOS apache2 on Debian/Ubuntu No

Example Playbook

Run the role with the le_testing variable set to true in testing, false in production. The le_testing variable will setup a local ACME server with nearly unlimited rates and the cutover scripts will use that instead of LetsEncrypt's servers.

In host_vars/test.com:

apache_vhosts:
  - servername: "test.com"
    serveralias: "localhost"
    documentroot: "/var/www/html"
    extra_parameters: |
      <Proxy "fcgi://localhost:9000/">
        ProxySet timeout=300
      </Proxy>
      <FilesMatch "\.php$">
        SetHandler proxy:fcgi://localhost:9000/
      </FilesMatch>

apache_vhosts_ssl:
  - servername: "test.com"
    serveralias: "localhost"
    certificate_file: /etc/letsencrypt/live/test.com/cert.pem
    certificate_chain_file: /etc/letsencrypt/live/test.com/chain.pem
    certificate_key_file: /etc/letsencrypt/live/test.com/privkey.pem
    documentroot: "/var/www/html"
    extra_parameters: |
      <Proxy "fcgi://localhost:9000/">
        ProxySet timeout=300
      </Proxy>
      <FilesMatch "\.php$">
        SetHandler proxy:fcgi://localhost:9000/
      </FilesMatch>

le_hosts:
  - domain: test.com
    directory: /var/www/html

In a tasks file:

- name: Setup letsencrypt
  # Most webservers fail to start the webserver if there are no certs installed yet.
  import_role: 
    name: tag1consulting.letsencrypt

- name: Setup webserver
  # Now that there are certs and keys, the webserver can be brought up
  import_role:
    name: some_webserver_role

OR

In a playbook:

- hosts: webservers
  roles:
     - tag1consulting.letsencrypt
     - some_webserver_role

Testing

Tests are written for use with Molecule You can run tests locally against the scenarios centos7 and ubuntu18.04. All scenarios set le_testing to true.

Run molecule verify <scenario> before pushing your changes.

License

BSD

Author

Tag1 Consulting