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Using ACME with step-ca

Let’s assume you’ve installed step-ca (e.g., using brew install step), have it running at https://ca.internal, and you’ve bootstrapped your ACME client system(s) (or at least installed your root certificate at ~/.step/certs/root_ca.crt).

Enabling ACME

To enable ACME, simply add an ACME provisioner to your step-ca configuration by running:

$ step ca provisioner add my-acme-provisioner --type ACME

NOTE: The above command will add a new provisioner of type ACME and name my-acme-provisioner. The name is used to identify the provisioner (e.g. you cannot have two ACME provisioners with the same name).

Now restart or SIGHUP step-ca to pick up the new configuration.

That’s it.

Configuring Clients

To configure an ACME client to connect to step-ca you need to:

  1. Point the client at the right ACME directory URL
  2. Tell the client to trust your CA’s root certificate

Once certificates are issued, you’ll also need to ensure they’re renewed before they expire.

Pointing Clients at the right ACME Directory URL

Most ACME clients connect to Let’s Encrypt by default. To connect to step-ca you need to point the client at the right ACME directory URL.

A single instance of step-ca can have multiple ACME provisioners, each with their own ACME directory URL that looks like:

https://{ca-host}/acme/{provisioner-name}/directory

We just added an ACME provisioner named “acme”. Its ACME directory URL is:

https://ca.internal/acme/acme/directory

Telling clients to trust your CA’s root certificate

Communication between an ACME client and server always uses HTTPS. By default, client’s will validate the server’s HTTPS certificate using the public root certificates in your system’s default trust store. That’s fine when you’re connecting to Let’s Encrypt: it’s a public CA and its root certificate is in your system’s default trust store already. Your internal root certificate isn’t, so HTTPS connections from ACME clients to step-ca will fail.

There are two ways to address this problem:

  1. Explicitly configure your ACME client to trust step-ca's root certificate, or
  2. Add step-ca's root certificate to your system’s default trust store (e.g., using step certificate install)

If you’re using your CA for TLS in production, explicitly configuring your ACME client to only trust your root certificate is a better option. We’ll demonstrate this method with several clients below.

If you’re simulating Let’s Encrypt in pre-production, installing your root certificate is a more faithful simulation of production. Once your root certificate is installed, no additional client configuration is necessary.

Caution: adding a root certificate to your system’s trust store is a global operation. Certificates issued by your CA will be trusted everywhere, including in web browsers.

Example using certbot

certbot is the grandaddy of ACME clients. Built and supported by the EFF, it’s the standard-bearer for production-grade command-line ACME.

To get a certificate from step-ca using certbot you need to:

  1. Point certbot at your ACME directory URL using the --server flag.
  2. Tell certbot to trust your root certificate using the REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE environment variable.

For example:

$ sudo REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE=$(step path)/certs/root_ca.crt \
  certbot certonly -n --standalone -d foo.internal \
    --server https://ca.internal/acme/acme/directory

sudo is required in certbot's standalone mode so it can listen on port 80 to complete the http-01 challenge. If you already have a webserver running you can use webroot mode instead. With the appropriate plugin certbot also supports the dns-01 challenge for most popular DNS providers. Deeper integrations with nginx and apache can even configure your server to use HTTPS automatically (we'll set this up ourselves later). All of this works with step-ca.

You can renew all of the certificates you've installed using cerbot by running:

$ sudo REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE=$(step path)/certs/root_ca.crt certbot renew

You can automate renewal with a simple cron entry:

*/15 * * * * root REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE=$(step path)/certs/root_ca.crt certbot -q renew

The certbot packages for some Linux distributions will create a cron entry or systemd timer like this for you. This entry won't work with step-ca because it doesn't set the REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE environment variable. You'll need to manually tweak it to do so.

More subtly, certbot's default renewal job is tuned for Let's Encrypt's 90 day certificate lifetimes: it's run every 12 hours, with actual renewals occurring for certificates within 30 days of expiry. By default, step-ca issues certificates with much shorter 24 hour lifetimes. The cron entry above accounts for this by running certbot renew every 15 minutes. You'll also want to configure your domain to only renew certificates when they're within a few hours of expiry by adding a line like:

renew_before_expiry = 8 hours

to the top of your renewal configuration (e.g., in /etc/letsencrypt/renewal/foo.internal.conf).

Feedback

step-ca should work with any ACMEv2 (RFC8555) compliant client that supports the http-01 or dns-01 challenge. If you run into any issues please let us know on gitter or in an issue.