DEPRECATED!

This was useful for some time but I now use docker swarm with traefik for loadbalancing which has support for letsencrypt baked in. I suggest you start using this today too.

Communication

I opened a Gitter room

Bugs go to issues please.

Docker service

Available on docker hub.

Description

This service can be run on a webserver to obtain letsencrypt certificates. It can be run on the server that the A record of the domain points to, but the major benefit of this service is, that it can be run in a professional setup with loadbalancers and in this scenario be deployed on any node behind the loadbalancer without interrupting the live deployment.

This service has been tested in a deployment orchestrated with Docker Cloud and their haproxy image but should work fine in other setups too.

Background

The problem with the default letsencrypt tool is that it expects to be run on port 80 on the root domain. Or at least the server where all http traffic to the domain example.com ends up. This means that you can either "inject" it into your one instance apache or nginx server. If you have another setup which involves for example some node http servers and path based http routing + loadbalancing you need to take down your live deployment, start a new webserver, get the certificates on port 80 and then start your deployment again. It goes without saying that this cannot be a "workflow".

Intent of this service

To provide a solution to the above problem, we suggest this service.

• It can be run as an additional service in any load balanced setup.
• It can run forever and permanently runs a http server on port 80 (important for load balancers that check whether the service is "alive" before routing traffic to it).
• One can securely connect to the service at any time and create or renew certificates with a simple command.

Setup and certificate creation

I made a stackfile to get you going. Available on stackfiles.io

Assumptions

• You have exactly one node "loadbalancer" in docker cloud that has the tag "loadbalancer". You can change "loadbalancer" to whatever floats your boat, it just needs to match the "tag" in the stackfile.
• You want to issue certs for example.org and have certs.example.org and example.org properly registered and the DNS entries resolve to the node with the tag "loadbalancer"¹.

Steps

1. Copy the stackfile and change the content (like domain names, passwords and such).
2. Deploy the stackfile to docker cloud. Wait for the services to start.
3. Check whether http://example.org/.well-known/check shows the correct success message ("Letsencrypt cert service reporting in! Load balancing seems to work.")
4. Check whether http://certs.example.org/.well-known/check shows the correct success message ("Letsencrypt cert service reporting in! Load balancing seems to work.")
5. Check whether http://certs.example.org/status shows success message
6. Open http://certs.example.com/makecert²(wait a little, if you get an error, check the server logs to debug or open an issue here).
7. On success go to https://certs.example.org:8443/status and authenticate (Please check that it is properly encrypted traffic!)
8. Then do one of these:
   1. Get your certificate from https://certs.example.com:8443/certs/example.org/cert.pem
   2. Get your private key from https://certs.example.com:8443/certs/example.org/privkey.pem
   3. Get you Docker Cloud Haproxy certificate string from https://certs.example.com:8443/certs/example.org/bundle.pem?haproxy=true (:D)
9. Change the stackfile and put the certificate in the environment of the lb to enable encryption. See here
10. Check that https://example.org gives you correctly encrypted responses.

Remarks

¹: Two ways to achieve this. For example.org (root domain) you need an A-Record with the ip address of the node. Do not set a CNAME for the root domain, you will break stuff, for example MX records. For certs.example.org you can either put an A record with the ip address or you create a CNAME for certs and point it to the endpoint of the loadbalancer which will be something like lb.stackname.hashystring.dockercloud.com

²: There are no checks on rate limit and so on. Please do not hit /makecert too often.

Certificat renewal

With private service enabled and certificates in place you can hit https://certs.example.org/makecert to renew certs. On success you can retrieve the new extended certificate as above.

Container configuration

As this is a docker container image, all configuration of the running container is done by setting appropriate environment variables. These are as follows:

General environment variables

|Variable|Explanation|Example value| | --- | --- | --- | --- | |CERT_DOMAINS|Domains the certificate should be issued for, comma separated | example.com,app.example.com| |CERT_EMAIL|Email for notifications (like imminent certificate expiry)|admin@example.com| |CERT_SERVICE_PRIVATE|Flag to run private part of app (certificate hosting)|true| |CERT_SERVICE_PASSWORD|Pass to authenticate against private certificate service|SomeGoodPassword| |CERT_SERVICE_USERNAME|Username to authenticate against private certificate service|michael|

Docker Cloud HAProxy specific

|Variable|Explanation|Example value| | --- | --- | --- | --- | |VIRTUAL_HOST|Routing all acme queries to the service|http://*/.well-known/* |VIRTUAL_HOST_WEIGHT|Taking over example.org/.well-known/acme... queries. You need to set a value that is higher than the one of the "catch all" service|1 |EXCLUDE_PORTS|Don't route traffic to port 443|443

Usually you would want the newly generated certificates to be stored in the hosts file system so make sure to link the container dir /etc/letsencrypt to the host.

Node package

The docker image is running a node service. It can also be used standalone if you need it. Documentation comes below.

API Reference

letsencrypt-cert-service

Example

var CertService = require("letsencrypt-cert-service");
var certService = new CertService(config);
certService.start(callback);

• letsencrypt-cert-service
  • ~LetsEncryptCertService
    • new LetsEncryptCertService(config)

letsencrypt-cert-service~LetsEncryptCertService

Kind: inner class of letsencrypt-cert-service

new LetsEncryptCertService(config)

Param	Type	Description
config
config.domains	Array.<string>	The hostnames which the certificate is to be created for
config.email	string	Letsencrypt notification email
[config.private]	boolean	Set to true when you want private service to be running
[config.password]	string	Strong password to protect private parts - required when private true
[config.username]	string	Username of choice - required when private true

Contribution

Before you open a pull request, please acknowledge the Unlicense. You have to sign a CLA before I can merge any PRs. For further details see the contribution guidelines.

License

Released under the Unlicense. See the Unlicense