Ansible role to obtain Let's Encrypt SSL certificates

This role is meant to request SSL certificates from Let's Encrypt, using the HTTP or the DNS challenge for their ACME API.

Features:

• Installs and configures certbot and the DNS challenge helper script
• Supports both the HTTP and the DNS challenge
  • For HTTP challenge, the authenticator plugins apache, nginx, standalone and webroot are supported
• The DNS challenge uses a dedicated zone for AMCE challenge tokens only, lowering the security risks of dynamic updates. The concept is explained here
• Restart of services at certificate renewal using post-hooks or custom post-hook command
• Permission control to certificates using a dedicated system group

Supported distributions:

• Debian 11 (Bullseye)
• Debian 12 (Bookworm)

Tested on:

• Debian 11 (Bullseye)
• Debian 12 (Bookworm)
• CentOS7
• Ubuntu 2204 (Jammy Jellyfish)

It does the following:

• When letsencrypt_setup is True (the default) this role will:

  • Install certbot
  • Register an account at Let's Encrypt
  • Install required files/keys for the DNS challenge
  • Create the system group 'letsencrypt'

• When invoked with filled variable 'letsencrypt_cert':

  • Requests a SSL certificate via the Let's Encrypt ACME API, either using the HTTP challenge or using the DNS challenge
  • Optionally sets the post-hook for certificate renewals (to restart required services afterwards)
  • Optionally adds system users to the 'letsencrypt' system group to grant them read access to the SSL certificates and their private keys

How it works (examples)

• Installation of certbot ansible-playbook site.yml -l localhost -t letsencrypt
• Creation of a certificate via HTTP challenge and with webroot authenticator (restarting service 'apache2' at renewal): ansible-playbook site.yml -l localhost -t letsencrypt -e '{"letsencrypt_cert":{"name":"sub.example.org","domains":["sub.example.org"],"challenge":"http","http_auth":"webroot","webroot_path":"/var/www/sub.example.org","services":["apache2"]}}'
• Creation of a certificate via DNS challenge (granting read access to certs to user 'Debian-exim', restarting services 'exim4' and 'dovecot` at renewal): ansible-playbook site.yml -l localhost -t letsencrypt -e '{"letsencrypt_cert":{"name":"sub2","domains":["sub2.example.org","sub2.another.example.org"],"challenge":"dns","services":["dovecot","exim4"],"users":["Debian-exim"]}}'
• Creation of a certificate via HTTP challenge and with standalone authenticator (re-using same private key at renewal and running a custom post-hook script at renewal): ansible-playbook site.yml -l localhost -t letsencrypt -e '{"letsencrypt_cert":{"name":"sub3","domains":["sub3.example.org"],"challenge":"http","http_auth":"standalone","reuse_key":True,"post_hook":"/usr/local/bin/cert-post-hook.sh"}}'

Expected structure of variable letsencrypt_cert

The variable letsencrypt_cert is expected to be a dictionary:

letsencrypt_opts_extra: "--register-unsafely-without-email"
letsencrypt_cert:
  name: sub.example.org
  domains:
    - sub.example.org
  challenge: http
  http_auth: webroot
  webroot_path: /var/www/sub.example.org
  services:
    - apache2

or:

letsencrypt_cert:
  name: sub2
  domains:
    - sub2.example.org
    - sub2.another.example.org
  challenge: dns
  services:
    - dovecot
    - exim4
  users:
    - Debian-exim

or:

letsencrypt_cert:
  name: sub3
  domains:
    - sub3.example.org
  challenge: http
  http_auth: standalone
  reuse_key: True
  post_hook: "/usr/local/bin/cert-post-hook.sh"

letsencrypt_cert:
  name: sub3
  domains:
    - sub3.example.org
  challenge: http
  http_auth: standalone
  reuse_key: True
  deploy_hook: "/usr/local/bin/cert-post-hook.sh"

The dictionary supports the following keys:

• name: name of the certificate [optional]
• domains: list of domains for the certificate [required]
• challenge: 'http' or 'dns' [required]
  • for challenge 'http': http_auth: 'webroot', 'apache' or 'nginx' [optional, default 'webroot']
    • for http_auth 'webroot': webroot_path [optional, default '/var/www']
• services: list of services to be restarted in the post-hook [optional]
• reuse_key: Reuse same private key at certificate renewal. 'True' or 'False' (default 'False')
• post_hook: Custom post-hook to be executed after attempt to obtain/renew a certificate [optional]
• deploy_hook: Custom deploy-hook to be executed after a successful attempt to obtain/renew a certificate [optional]
• renew_hook: Custom renew-hook to be executed once for each renewed certificate after certificate renewal [optional]
• users: list of users to be added to system group 'letsencrypt' [optional]

General Preliminaries

The role takes care of installing certbot and requesting SSL certificates using either the HTTP or the DNS challenge. It doesn't install or configure the required infrastructure (i.e. the Apache webserver or a DNS server).

The role is tested with Ansible 2.2 only. No guaranties that it runs with earlier versions of Ansible.

The HTTP challenge

Requirements:

• The domain name(s) of the requested certificate has to point to the system
• For http_auth 'apache', Apache2 has to be installed (and configured) on the system
• For http_auth 'nginx', NGINX has to be installed (and configured) on the system

The DNS challenge

Requirements:

• A DNS server with a dedicated zone, used for the ACME DNS challenge only. This zone has to allow dynamic DNS updates (NSUPDATE) for TXT records (see below).
• CNAME records for _acme-challenge.sub.example.org for all domain names(s) of the requested certificate have to point to sub.example.org._le.example.org (inside the dedicated zone for the ACME DNS challenge).
• The content of the DNS update key and private DNS update keys need to be available in the Ansible vars letsencrypt_ddns_key and letsencrypt_ddns_privkey (preferably inside a vault).

This role installs a helper script for the DNS challenge to /usr/local/bin/certbot-dns-hook.sh. This script will add the validation token to the TXT record at sub.example.org._le.example.org during the DNS challenge and remove it afterwards.

Wildcard support with the DNS challenge

Obtaining wildcard certificates should work out of the box via DNS challenge.

Configuring bind9 for the DNS challenge

(Another option would be to use the acme-dns server for this)

Generate a key for dynamic updates:

cd /etc/bind/keys
dnssec-keygen -a HMAC-SHA512 -b 512 -n USER _le.example.org_ddns_update
chown -R bind:bind /etc/bind/keys

Add the key to your bind config (e.g. at /etc/bind/named.conf.options):

key "_le.example.org_ddns_update" {
	algorithm hmac-sha512;
	secret "...";
};

Create the zone for dynamic updates:

$ORIGIN .
$TTL 86400	; 1 day
_le.example.org		IN SOA	ns1.example.org. postmaster.example.org. (
				2017061501 ; serial
				86400      ; refresh (1 day)
				3600       ; retry (1 hour)
				2419200    ; expire (4 weeks)
				86400      ; minimum (1 day)
				)
			NS	ns1.example.org.
			NS	ns2.example.org.
			TXT	"v=spf1 -all"

and configure it in your bind config (e.g. at /etc/bind/named.conf.local):

zone "_le.example.org" {
	type master;
	file "/etc/bind/zones/db._le.example.org";
	update-policy { grant _le.example.org_ddns_update wildcard *._le.example.org. TXT; };
};

Format for /etc/letsencrypt/keys/ddns_update.key (from bind)

key "<key>" {
    algorithm HMAC-SHA512;
    secret "<key>";
};

Format for /etc/letsencrypt/keys/ddns_update.private

Private-key-format: v1.3
Algorithm: 165 (HMAC_SHA512)
Key: <key>
Bits: AAA=
Created: 20181017144534
Publish: 20181017144534
Activate: 20181017144534

Ansible variable defaults

# Perform setup step; set false to disable
letsencrypt_setup: True

# Provide existing account data to be copied over
letsencrypt_account: ""
# letsencrypt_account:
#   hash: 1234567890abcdef1234567890abcdef
#   id: 123456789
#   creation_host: localhost
#   creation_dt: 2020-12-13T13:12:00Z
#   private_key:
#     n: 1234
#     e: 5678
#     d: 90ab
#     p: cdef
#     q: 1234
#     dp: 5678
#     dq: 90ab
#     qi: cdef
#     kty: RSA

# Set the email address associated with the Let's Encrypt account
letsencrypt_account_email: ""

# Default authenticator for the HTTP challenge ('webroot' or 'apache')
letsencrypt_http_auth: webroot

# Default webroot path for the authenticator 'webroot'
letsencrypt_webroot_path: /var/www

# Install the DNS challenge helper script and DNS update key
letsencrypt_dns_challenge: yes

# Settings for the dynamic DNS zone updates
# letsencrypt_ddns_server: ""
# letsencrypt_ddns_zone: ""
# letsencrypt_ddns_key: ""
# letsencrypt_ddns_privkey: ""

# Create system group 'letsencrypt' for access to certificates
letsencrypt_group: yes

# Reuse private key at certificate renewal?
letsencrypt_reuse_key: False

# Allow subset of names?
letsencrypt_subset_names: True

# Set global extra commandline options for certbot
letsencrypt_opts_extra: ""

# Set path for letsencrypt directory (no trailing "/" !!)
letsencrypt_directory: /etc/letsencrypt

Testing

For testing purposes, variable letsencrypt_test can be set. If set to True, the role will use Let's Encrypt test servers for account creation and obtaining the certificate.

For developing and testing the role we use Molecule and Vagrant/Github Actions. On the local environment you can easily test the role with

molecule test

License

This Ansible role is licensed under the GNU GPLv3.

Author

Copyright 2017-2019 systemli.org (https://www.systemli.org/)