ibotty/openshift-letsencrypt repository overview

⁠PROJECT NO LONGER ACTIVELY MAINTAINED, use https://github.com/tnozicka/openshift-acme⁠ instead (comparison here⁠)

⁠Automatic Certificates for Openshift Routes

It will manage all routes with (by default) butter.sh/letsencrypt-managed=yes labels in the project/namespace, it's deployed in.

⁠Limitations

For now, there are the following limitations.

1. It only supports domain names of length smaller than 64 characters.
2. It only implements http-01-type verification, better known as "Well-Known".
3. Multiple domains per certificate are not supported. See issue #1.
4. It will not create the letsencrypt account. It needs to be created before deploying. See Section Installation below.
5. It doesn't work cross-namespace. See issue #4.

⁠Customizing

The following env variables can be used.

• LETSENCRYPT_ROUTE_SELECTOR (optional, defaults to butter.sh/letsencrypt-managed=yes), to filter the routes to use;
• LETSENCRYPT_RENEW_BEFORE_DAYS (optional, defaults to 30), renew this number of days before the certificate is about to expire;
• LETSENCRYPT_CONTACT_EMAIL (required for account generation), the email that will be used by the ACME CA;
• LETSENCRYPT_CA (optional, defaults to https://acme-v01.api.letsencrypt.org/directory);
• LETSENCRYPT_KEYTYPE (optional, defaults to rsa), the key algorithm to use;
• LETSENCRYPT_KEYSIZE (optional, defaults to 4096), the size in bit for the private keys (if applicable);

⁠Troubleshooting

⁠Route does not get admitted

Please test, whether DNS is set up correctly. In particular the hostname to get a certificate for has to point to the router (or the loadbalancer), also from within the cluster!

⁠Implementation Details

⁠Secrets

The ACME key is stored in letsencrypt-creds.

⁠Containers

The pod consists of three containers, each doing exactly one thing. They share the filesystem /var/www/acme-challenge to store the challenges.

• Watcher Container, watcher, watches routes and either generates a new certificate or set the already generated certificate.

• Cron container, cron, periodically checks whether the certificates need to be regenerated. When Kubernetes cron jobs are implemented, this will move outside the pod.

• Webserver Container, nginx, serves .well-known/acme-challenge when asking to sign the certificate. Uses ibotty/s2i-nginx on dockerhub.

⁠Installing Openshift-Letsencrypt

⁠Template

Create the template as usual.

> oc create -f template.yaml

⁠Deploy openshift-letsencrypt

Instanciate the template.

> oc new-app --template=letsencrypt -p [email protected]

⁠Service Account

The "letsencrypt" service account needs to be able to manage its secrets and manage routes.

> oc policy add-role-to-user edit -z letsencrypt

⁠Let's encrypt credentials

⁠Register an account key

You can skip that section, if you already use letsencrypt and already have an account key.

Get dehydrated⁠ and run the following commands.

> echo [email protected] > my_config
> /path/to/dehydrated -f config --register --accept-terms

This will generate a key in ./accounts/*/account_key.pem and info about it in ./accounts/*/registration_info.json.

⁠Create the account key secret

Given an account-key, create a secret as follows.

> oc create secret generic letsencrypt-creds \
     --from-file=account-key=/path/to/account-key.pem \
     --from-file=registration-info=./accounts/*/registration_info.json

The registration info is not strictly necessary.

⁠Notes

⁠HPKP

It is necessary to pin at least one key to use for disaster recovery, outside the cluster!

Maybe pre-generate n keys and pin all of them. On key rollover, delete the previous key, use the oldest of the remaining keys to sign the certificate, generate a new key and pin the new keys. That way, the pin can stay valid for (n-1)* lifetime of a key. That is, if no key gets compromised!