If you'd like to jump to the QuickStart, otherwise keep reading.
PeterSSLers is a bundled ACME Client, Certificate Manager, OpenResty/Nginx Plugin and Python-based framework designed for programmatically managing SSL Certificates.
This project started at Aptise Media as an internal tool for obtaining and managing SSL Certificates for partner/customer domains. The project integrated an ACME(v1) Client, a SQL based Certificate Manager, and an OpenResty plugin for dynamic certificate loading.
ACME-V2 support involved a large rewrite of the Client and the Certificate
Manager's design. The central object changed from a CertificateSigned to the
AcmeOrder, which caused a ripple effect. The V1 release again changed the
central object to a new RenewalConfiguration concept and streamlined operations.
Peter SSLers or how i stopped worrying and learned to LOVE the SSL Certificate.
peter_sslers is a framework designed to help experienced Admins and DevOps
persons manage SSL Certificates and deploy them on larger systems (e.g. you have
lots of Domains and/or Nodes and/or Networks). This system is NOT designed for
casual usage; it was designed for the needs of cloud deployed PAAS/SAAS systems
that host domains for scalable numbers of customers over scalable nodes.
What's in the "box" ?
- This project is a Python/Pyramid based
robust SSL Certificate Client, Manager and Explorer, complete with:
- an Admin Dashboard,
- a fullly programmatic API,
- commandline tools
- cron job "routines"
- an integrated ACME V2 Client optimized for the LetsEncrypt CertificateAuthority.
- The paired project
Lua-Resty Peter_SSLers
is an OpenResty Lua module to enable
Dynamic SSL Certificate Handling on the
Nginxwebserver.
This library contains everything you need to ssl-erate an inifinitely scaleable multi-server or multi-domain setup!!!
Amazing, right?
This project is not aimed at casual users or people concerned with a handful of websites or servers.
This project is designed for people who have lots of Domains and/or Servers, all of which need to be coordinated and centrally managed. The target audience is companies that offer whitelabel services, such as: SAAS, PAAS, hosting user domains, and other infrastructure oriented systems.
If you can use Certbot or another consumer friendly simple client to solve your needs, YOU ALMOST ABSOLUTELY WANT TO USE THAT CLIENT INSTEAD.
Peter, as we fondly call this package, offers lightweight tools to centrally manage SSL Certificate data in a centralized SQL database of your choice. PostgreSQL is recommended; sqlite3 is supported and the primary testing environment.
Peter combines an integrated ACME V2 Client designed to primarily operate against the LetsEncrypt service, alongside tools designed to manage, deploy and troubleshoot SSL Certificates.
It is highly likely that PeterSSLers will work with most, if not all, ACME Servers. However, only LetsEncrypt's Boulder and Pebble are target ACME Servers at this time. LetsEncrypt implementation of the ACME RFC, Boulder has made some unique decisions regarding RFC spec-compliant implementation details, and this system was written to support those first and foremost. Widespread compatibility is hopefully achieved by using the Pebble ACME Server for testing.
Peter's core tool is a lightweight database-backed Pyramid application that can:
- Act as a client for the entire ACME Certificate provisioning process, operating behind a proxied webserver for HTTP-01 challenges or integrating with an acme-dns .
- Offer a unified API for creating and managing the ACME process. Your client software will only talk to Peter, never LetsEncrypt/ACME.
- Import existing ACME Account Credentials for various CA Operations.
- Import existing SSL Certificates for management and exploration
- Ease provisioning Certificates onto various servers across your systems
- Browse Certificate data and easily see what needs to be renewed
- Interact with the upstream ACME Servers to deal with accounts, pending AcmeAuthorizations, and all that mess.
- Communicate with a properly configured
OpenResty enabled
Nginxweb server (see next section) - Prime a Redis cache with Certificate data
- Translate Certificates into different formats
- Be the source of lots of puns!
Peter ships alongside a Lua opm module for the
OpenResty framework on the Nginx
server which will:
- Dynamically request Certificates from a primed
Rediscache - Store data in
Nginx's shared worker and main memories - Expose routes to flush the worker shared memory or expire select keys.
The Peter_SSLers OpenResty Module
module is available in a separate project,
lua-resty-peter_sslers and can
be installed into your OpenResty / Nginx
server via the opm package installer. It has been used in production for several
years.
The Pyramid based application can function
as a daemon for Admin or API access, or even a commandline script. Most web pages
offer .json endpoints, so you can easily issue commands via curl and have
human-readable data in a terminal window. Don't want to do things manually? Ok -
everything was built to be readable on commandline browsers... yes, this is
actually developed-for and tested-with Lynx. I sh*t you not, Lynx.
Do you like book-keeping and logging? Peter's ACME Client can log everything into SQL so you can easily find the answers to burning questions like:
- What AcmeAuthorizations are still pending?
- What AcmeChallenges are active?
- Which external IPs are triggering my AcmeChallenges?
- Where did this PrivateKey come from?
- How many requests have I been making to upstream servers?
All communication to the upstream ACME server is logged using Python's standard
logging module.
module: peter_sslers.lib.acme_v2
- log level:
logging.infowill show the raw data received - log level:
logging.debugwill show the response parsed to json, when applicable
THIS PACKAGE IS EXTREME TO THE MAX!!!
Do you like cross-referencing? Your certs are broken down into fields that are cross-referenced or searchable within Peter as well.
Peter has absolutely no security measures and should only be used by people who understand that. This should be a self-selecting group, because many people will not want this tool. Peter is a honeybadger, he don't care. He does what he wants.
Peter offers several commandline tools -- so spinning up a tool "webserver" mode may not be necessary at all -- or might only be needed for brief periods of time.
SQLAlchemy is the underlying database library, so virtually any database can be used
(SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, mssql, etc). SQLite is the default, but
the package has been deployed against PostgreSQL. SQLite is actually kind of great,
because a single .sqlite file can be sftp'd on-to and off-of different machines
for distribution and local viewings.
Peter only uses the Cryptography package, support for PyOpenSSL was dropped.
There are 2 main libraries:
-
The paired Lua-Resty Peter_SSLers project, an OpenResty Lua module that enables Dynamic SSL Certificate Handling on the
Nginxwebserver. -
This Python library, Peter_SSLers, which provides:
- Commandline Tools
- A webserver application for obtaining and managing certificates
- designed for JSON/API programmatic usage
- usable by humans with simplified html
- An isolated library and model for building custom applications
Provisioning Certificates and initial orders are currently done through the web interface.
Renewing Certificates can be done via two methods:
- If the web application is running, it can renew certificates
- A commandline cron routine will spin up a webserver to answer challenges if needed
Current support for ACME Challenge Types:
- HTTP-01: answered by the native webserver
- DNS-01: domains will be registered with a global acme-dns server
- TLS-ALPN-01: support is not currently planned
Most of us hate having to spend time on DevOps tasks. Personally, I would rather spend time working on the core product or consumer products. This tool was designed as a swiss-army-knife to streamline some tasks and troubleshoot a handful of issues with https hosting. This also allows for programmatic control of most ACME operations that can be difficult to accomplish with Certbot and other popular clients.
Peter sits in between your machines and LetsEncrypt. It is designed to let your applications programmatically interact with ACME servers, allowing you to provision new Certificates and load them into webservers.
Peter is originally designed for systems that offer whitelabel services in the cloud.
PRs are absolutely welcome, even if just fixes or additions to the test-suite.
Peter SSLers is fully functional and deployed in production environments for:
- Certificate Management
- Certificate Procurement
- Manual Renewal
- Programmatic Renewal
- Interrogating and syncing against ACME Servers
- Queuing new Domains for Certificate Provisioning
- Automatic Renewal
- Backup Certificates
- ARI Monitoring
- This package DOES NOT USE/KNOW/CARE ABOUT SECURITY.
- This package manages PRIVATE SSL KEYS and makes them readable.
- If you do not know / are not really awesome with basic network security PLEASE DO NOT USE THIS.
| Feature | Supported? |
|---|---|
| New Certificate | Yes |
| Renew Certificate | Yes |
| Deactivate Account | Yes |
| Account Key Rollover | Yes |
| Automatic Renewal Information | Yes |
| EAB | No |
EAB is not implemented due to the lack of need. This may one day change.
"Peter SSLers" is the core toolkit. It is a Pyramid application that can be spun up as a webserver or used via a commandline interface. Peter is your friend and handles all of the Certificate Management and translation functions for you. He's a bit eccentric, but basically a good guy.
By default, the "SSL Minnow" is a SQLite database ssl_minnow.sqlite. It is the
backing datastore for SSL Certificates and the operations log. Your data is ONLY
saved to the SSL Minnow - not to the filesystem like other LE clients - so you
should be careful with it. If the Minnow would be lost, it can not be recovered.
Be a good skipper, or your three hour tour could end up taking many years and might
involve the Harlem Globetrotters, who are great to watch but do you want to be stuck
on a remote desert island with them?!?! No.
OpenResty is a fork of the nginx webserver which offers a lot of programmatic hooks (similar to Apache's mod_perl). One of the many hooks allows for programmatic determination and loading of SSL Certificates based on the hostname.
A tiered waterfall approach is used to aggressively cache Certificates:
- initial attempt:
nginxworker memory - failover 1:
nginxshared memory - failover 2: centralized
redisserver - failover 3: querying the
Peter SSLersPyramidapplication
The Pyramid application can be used to prime and clear each cache level.
SSLX, I'm your only friend. SSLX, Your love will sing for you.
Available via the opm package manager:
opm get lua-resty-peter_sslers
The source and docs are available on a separate github repository:
Several "routines" and scripts are provided for commandline invocation:
Routines for cron:
-
periodic_tasks This routine runs all the other routines on a schedule
- on first run:
- it generates a line to enter into your crontab, using an random minute
- a json file is created that lists which hours the other routines will be run
- on subsequent runs:
- the json file is loaded and tasks are dispatched
The crontab should be installed to run every hour on a set minute, said set minute recommended by the periodic_tasks script. The scheduler will figure out what to run on a given hour.
If certs need to be ordered, a WSGI server running on :config.ini:
http_port.renewalswill be spun up to answer AcmeChallenges in a subprocess. Whatever server is listening to port80 should proxy to this server. This server only responds to public URLs.periodic_tasksis designed to run every core routine on an hourly basis.If alternate invocation strategies are required, there is a specific commandline routine for each task which can be used instead.
- on first run:
Please read the Automation Guide for more details and additional routines.
See TODO.txt
Please read the Full Installation Instructions
There is also a QuickStart
The abridged version:
mkdir certificate_admin
cd certificate_admin
virtualenv peter_sslers-venv
source peter_sslers-venv/bin/activate
git clone https://github.com/aptise/peter_sslers.git
cd peter_sslers
$VENV/bin/pip3 install -e .
vi conf/example_development.ini
$VENV/bin/initialize_peter_sslers_db conf/example_development.ini
$VENV/bin/import_certbot conf/example_development.ini dir=/etc/letsencrypt
$VENV/bin/pserve conf/example_development.ini