readme.md


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# PainlessLE: A wrapper script for Certbot
Painless issuing a single [X.509 certificate](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5280) for a bunch of hostnames from the **Let's Encrypt** Certification Authority (CA) without having an HTTP server installed (or for those people who do not want to touch their HTTP web directories and place a specific file to accomplish the ACME challenge). PainlessLE assumes that there is already a manually created private key which is used for the Certificate-Signing-Request (CSR) by OpenSSL. The location for the private key is defined within the `"CONFIDENTIAL"` variable and the path should exist with the desired UNIX file permissions.

## Requirements
The [Certbot client](https://certbot.eff.org/) must be installed on your machine because PainlessLE uses this piece of software to communicate over the [ACME protocol](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-acme-acme-01) with the ACME endpoint of Let's Encrypt and runs the ACME challenge. There are no known further requirements for using PainlessLE on Debian GNU/Linux at this time.

## Installation
Beside the possibility to manually place the script in some directory, you can use the more elegant way with [*GNU Stow*](https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/) to map the content of the `package` directory via symbolic links properly to `/usr/local`:

~~~bash
cd /usr/local/src
git clone $REPO && cd $REPO
stow -t /usr/local package
~~~

Make sure that no unprivileged user has write permissions on `/usr/local/sbin`, the symlink targets (in case you've choosen `stow`) and/or the `painless-le` script, because PainlessLE is usually executed with `root` privileges.

## Configuration
Change the `LETSENCRYPT_ENDPOINT` to the address of the ACME staging API for testing purposes. You also can define a command within `LETSENCRYPT_COMMAND_BEFORE` to shut down a running webserver to release the HTTP(S) port for the standalone webserver before Certbot runs the ACME challenge. You can restart your webserver after the ACME challenge is completed within `LETSENCRYPT_COMMAND_AFTER`.

## Arguments

### Required command-line options:
* `[-i]`: Contains a string with the directory path where the certificates should be installed. This directory should already contain a manually created private key (filename can be overridden by providing the `[-K]` option) for the Certificate-Signing-Request (CSR). It's always a good idea to handle the private keys manually because you may use [HTTP Public-Key-Pinning (HPKP)](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7469) so that you must ensure that the private key does not change silently.

* `[-h]`: Contains a colon (`:`) separated string with the DNS hostnames to include within the certificate. The string must be formatted as follows, without containing colons anywhere except **between** the hostnames: `example.org:blog.example.org:shop.example.org`

### Additional command-line options:
* `[-K]`: Filename for the existing private key relative to `[-i]`
* `[-I]`: Target filename for the intermediate certificate relative to `[-i]`
* `[-C]`: Target filename for the certificate only file relative to `[-i]`
* `[-F]`: Target filename for the certificate full file relative to `[-i]`

## Example
Lets assume you want to get a single X.509 certificate from the Let's Encrypt CA which includes three hostnames of your domain `example.org` (main domain, blog subdomain and shop subdomain). You already have a private key with the desired UNIX file permissions stored within the following example directory with the name `confidential.pem`:

	/etc/painless-le/example.org/
	└── [-rw-r----- user     group    ]  confidential.pem

The next step is to execute `painless-le` and providing the `-i` and `-h` options which are described above. In this example, the complete command-line string with the desired install directory `/etc/painless-le/example.org` and the desired hostnames `example.org`, `blog.example.org` and `shop.example.org` looks as follows:

	painless-le -i /etc/painless-le/example.org/ -h example.org:blog.example.org:shop.example.org

The Certbot client will now contact the ACME challenge servers and runs a temporary standalone webserver on your machine to accomplish the ACME challenge. If all works fine, you have nothing to intervene. After the command was successfully executed, you will see your certificates within your desired install directory (the certificate files will inherit the UNIX permissions of the `confidential.pem` file) and you're done:

	/etc/painless-le/example.org/
	├── [-rw-r----- user     group    ]  certificate_full.pem
	├── [-rw-r----- user     group    ]  certificate_only.pem
	├── [-rw-r----- user     group    ]  confidential.pem
	└── [-rw-r----- user     group    ]  intermediate.pem

**Note:** The new certificate files inherit the UNIX file permissions (**chmod** and **chown**) of the private key `confidential.pem`!