CERTBOT(7) Certbot CERTBOT(7)
NAME
certbot - Certbot Documentation
INTRODUCTION
NOTE:
To get started quickly, use the interactive installation guide.
Certbot is part of EFF’s effort to encrypt the entire Internet. Secure
communication over the Web relies on HTTPS, which requires the use of a
digital certificate that lets browsers verify the identity of web
servers (e.g., is that really google.com?). Web servers obtain their
certificates from trusted third parties called certificate authorities
(CAs). Certbot is an easy-to-use client that fetches a certificate from
Let’s Encrypt—an open certificate authority launched by the EFF,
Mozilla, and others—and deploys it to a web server.
Anyone who has gone through the trouble of setting up a secure website
knows what a hassle getting and maintaining a certificate is. Certbot
and Let’s Encrypt can automate away the pain and let you turn on and
manage HTTPS with simple commands. Using Certbot and Let's Encrypt is
free, so there’s no need to arrange payment.
How you use Certbot depends on the configuration of your web server.
The best way to get started is to use our interactive guide. It gener-
ates instructions based on your configuration settings. In most cases,
you’ll need root or administrator access to your web server to run
Certbot.
Certbot is meant to be run directly on your web server, not on your
personal computer. If you’re using a hosted service and don’t have di-
rect access to your web server, you might not be able to use Certbot.
Check with your hosting provider for documentation about uploading cer-
tificates or using certificates issued by Let’s Encrypt.
Certbot is a fully-featured, extensible client for the Let's Encrypt CA
(or any other CA that speaks the ACME protocol) that can automate the
tasks of obtaining certificates and configuring webservers to use them.
This client runs on Unix-based operating systems.
To see the changes made to Certbot between versions please refer to our
changelog.
Contributing
If you'd like to contribute to this project please read Developer
Guide.
This project is governed by EFF's Public Projects Code of Conduct.
How to run the client
The easiest way to install and run Certbot is by visiting
certbot.eff.org, where you can find the correct instructions for many
web server and OS combinations. For more information, see Get Certbot.
Understanding the client in more depth
To understand what the client is doing in detail, it's important to un-
derstand the way it uses plugins. Please see the explanation of plug-
ins in the User Guide.
Links
Documentation: https://certbot.eff.org/docs
Software project: https://github.com/certbot/certbot
Notes for developers: https://certbot.eff.org/docs/contributing.html
Main Website: https://certbot.eff.org
Let's Encrypt Website: https://letsencrypt.org
Community: https://community.letsencrypt.org
ACME spec: RFC 8555
ACME working area in github (archived):
https://github.com/ietf-wg-acme/acme
System Requirements
See https://certbot.eff.org/docs/install.html#system-requirements.
WHAT IS A CERTIFICATE?
A public key or digital certificate (formerly called an SSL certifi-
cate) uses a public key and a private key to enable secure communica-
tion between a client program (web browser, email client, etc.) and a
server over an encrypted SSL (secure socket layer) or TLS (transport
layer security) connection. The certificate is used both to encrypt
the initial stage of communication (secure key exchange) and to iden-
tify the server. The certificate includes information about the key,
information about the server identity, and the digital signature of the
certificate issuer. If the issuer is trusted by the software that ini-
tiates the communication, and the signature is valid, then the key can
be used to communicate securely with the server identified by the cer-
tificate. Using a certificate is a good way to prevent "man-in-the-mid-
dle" attacks, in which someone in between you and the server you think
you are talking to is able to insert their own (harmful) content.
You can use Certbot to easily obtain and configure a free certificate
from Let's Encrypt, a joint project of EFF, Mozilla, and many other
sponsors.
Certificates and Lineages
Certbot introduces the concept of a lineage, which is a collection of
all the versions of a certificate plus Certbot configuration informa-
tion maintained for that certificate from renewal to renewal. Whenever
you renew a certificate, Certbot keeps the same configuration unless
you explicitly change it, for example by adding or removing domains. If
you add domains, you can either add them to an existing lineage or cre-
ate a new one.
See also: Re-creating and Updating Existing Certificates
GET CERTBOT
Table of Contents
• System Requirements
• Installation
• Snap (Recommended)
• Alternative 1: Docker
• Alternative 2: Pip
• Alternative 3: Third Party Distributions
• Certbot-Auto [Deprecated]
System Requirements
• Linux, macOS, BSD and Windows
• Recommended root access on Linux/BSD/Required Administrator access on
Windows
• Port 80 Open
NOTE:
Certbot is most useful when run with root privileges, because it is
then able to automatically configure TLS/SSL for Apache and nginx.
Certbot is meant to be run directly on a web server, normally by a
system administrator. In most cases, running Certbot on your per-
sonal computer is not a useful option. The instructions below relate
to installing and running Certbot on a server.
Installation
Unless you have very specific requirements, we kindly suggest that you
use the installation instructions for your system found at
https://certbot.eff.org/instructions.
Snap (Recommended)
Our instructions are the same across all systems that use Snap. You can
find instructions for installing Certbot through Snap can be found at
https://certbot.eff.org/instructions by selecting your server software
and then choosing "snapd" in the "System" dropdown menu.
Most modern Linux distributions (basically any that use systemd) can
install Certbot packaged as a snap. Snaps are available for x86_64,
ARMv7 and ARMv8 architectures. The Certbot snap provides an easy way to
ensure you have the latest version of Certbot with features like auto-
mated certificate renewal preconfigured.
If you unable to use snaps, you can use an alternate method for in-
stalling certbot.
Alternative 1: Docker
Docker is an amazingly simple and quick way to obtain a certificate.
However, this mode of operation is unable to install certificates or
configure your webserver, because our installer plugins cannot reach
your webserver from inside the Docker container.
Most users should use the instructions at certbot.eff.org. You should
only use Docker if you are sure you know what you are doing and have a
good reason to do so.
You should definitely read the Where are my certificates? section, in
order to know how to manage the certificates manually. Our ciphersuites
page provides some information about recommended ciphersuites. If none
of these make much sense to you, you should definitely use the instal-
lation method recommended for your system at certbot.eff.org, which en-
ables you to use installer plugins that cover both of those hard top-
ics.
If you're still not convinced and have decided to use this method, from
the server that the domain you're requesting a certificate for resolves
to, install Docker, then issue a command like the one found below. If
you are using Certbot with the Standalone plugin, you will need to make
the port it uses accessible from outside of the container by including
something like -p 80:80 or -p 443:443 on the command line before cert-
bot/certbot.
sudo docker run -it --rm --name certbot \
-v "/etc/letsencrypt:/etc/letsencrypt" \
-v "/var/lib/letsencrypt:/var/lib/letsencrypt" \
certbot/certbot certonly
Running Certbot with the certonly command will obtain a certificate and
place it in the directory /etc/letsencrypt/live on your system. Because
Certonly cannot install the certificate from within Docker, you must
install the certificate manually according to the procedure recommended
by the provider of your webserver.
There are also Docker images for each of Certbot's DNS plugins avail-
able at https://hub.docker.com/u/certbot which automate doing domain
validation over DNS for popular providers. To use one, just replace
certbot/certbot in the command above with the name of the image you
want to use. For example, to use Certbot's plugin for Amazon Route 53,
you'd use certbot/dns-route53. You may also need to add flags to Cert-
bot and/or mount additional directories to provide access to your DNS
API credentials as specified in the DNS plugin documentation.
For more information about the layout of the /etc/letsencrypt direc-
tory, see Where are my certificates?.
Alternative 2: Pip
Installing Certbot through pip is only supported on a best effort basis
and when using a virtual environment. Instructions for installing Cert-
bot through pip can be found at https://certbot.eff.org/instructions by
selecting your server software and then choosing "pip" in the "System"
dropdown menu.
Alternative 3: Third Party Distributions
Third party distributions exist for other specific needs. They often
are maintained by these parties outside of Certbot and tend to rapidly
fall out of date on LTS-style distributions.
Certbot-Auto [Deprecated]
We used to have a shell script named certbot-auto to help people in-
stall Certbot on UNIX operating systems, however, this script is no
longer supported.
Please remove certbot-auto. To do so, you need to do three things:
1. If you added a cron job or systemd timer to automatically run cert-
bot-auto to renew your certificates, you should delete it. If you
did this by following our instructions, you can delete the entry
added to /etc/crontab by running a command like sudo sed -i '/cert-
bot-auto/d' /etc/crontab.
2. Delete the certbot-auto script. If you placed it in /usr/local/bin`
like we recommended, you can delete it by running sudo rm /usr/lo-
cal/bin/certbot-auto.
3. Delete the Certbot installation created by certbot-auto by running
sudo rm -rf /opt/eff.org.
USER GUIDE
Table of Contents
• Certbot Commands
• Getting certificates (and choosing plugins)
• Apache
• Webroot
• Nginx
• Standalone
• DNS Plugins
• Manual
• Combining plugins
• Third-party plugins
• Managing certificates
• Re-creating and Updating Existing Certificates
• Changing a Certificate's Domains
• RSA and ECDSA keys
• Changing a certificate's key type
• Revoking certificates
• Revoking by account key or certificate private key
• Deleting certificates
• Safely deleting certificates
• Renewing certificates
• Modifying the Renewal Configuration of Existing Certificates
• Automated Renewals
• Setting up automated renewal
• Where are my certificates?
• Pre and Post Validation Hooks
• Changing the ACME Server
• Lock Files
• Configuration file
• Log Rotation
• Certbot command-line options
• Getting help
Certbot Commands
Certbot uses a number of different commands (also referred to as "sub-
commands") to request specific actions such as obtaining, renewing, or
revoking certificates. The most important and commonly-used commands
will be discussed throughout this document; an exhaustive list also ap-
pears near the end of the document.
The certbot script on your web server might be named letsencrypt if
your system uses an older package. Throughout the docs, whenever you
see certbot, swap in the correct name as needed.
Getting certificates (and choosing plugins)
Certbot helps you achieve two tasks:
1. Obtaining a certificate: automatically performing the required au-
thentication steps to prove that you control the domain(s), saving
the certificate to /etc/letsencrypt/live/ and renewing it on a regu-
lar schedule.
2. Optionally, installing that certificate to supported web servers
(like Apache or nginx) and other kinds of servers. This is done by
automatically modifying the configuration of your server in order to
use the certificate.
To obtain a certificate and also install it, use the certbot run com-
mand (or certbot, which is the same).
To just obtain the certificate without installing it anywhere, the
certbot certonly ("certificate only") command can be used.
Some example ways to use Certbot:
# Obtain and install a certificate:
certbot
# Obtain a certificate but don't install it:
certbot certonly
# You may specify multiple domains with -d and obtain and
# install different certificates by running Certbot multiple times:
certbot certonly -d example.com -d www.example.com
certbot certonly -d app.example.com -d api.example.com
To perform these tasks, Certbot will ask you to choose from a selection
of authenticator and installer plugins. The appropriate choice of plug-
ins will depend on what kind of server software you are running and
plan to use your certificates with.
Authenticators are plugins which automatically perform the required
steps to prove that you control the domain names you're trying to re-
quest a certificate for. An authenticator is always required to obtain
a certificate.
Installers are plugins which can automatically modify your web server's
configuration to serve your website over HTTPS, using the certificates
obtained by Certbot. An installer is only required if you want Certbot
to install the certificate to your web server.
Some plugins are both authenticators and installers and it is possible
to specify a distinct combination of authenticator and plugin.
┌────────────┬──────┬──────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────┐
│Plugin │ Auth │ Inst │ Notes │ Challenge │
│ │ │ │ │ types (and │
│ │ │ │ │ port) │
├────────────┼──────┼──────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┤
│apache │ Y │ Y │ Automates obtaining and installing a certificate with Apache. │ http-01 (80) │
├────────────┼──────┼──────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┤
│nginx │ Y │ Y │ Automates obtaining and installing a certificate with Nginx. │ http-01 (80) │
├────────────┼──────┼──────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┤
│webroot │ Y │ N │ Obtains a certificate by writing to the webroot directory of │ http-01 (80) │
│ │ │ │ an already running webserver. │ │
├────────────┼──────┼──────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┤
│standalone │ Y │ N │ Uses a "standalone" webserver to obtain a certificate. │ http-01 (80) │
│ │ │ │ Requires port 80 to be available. This is useful on │ │
│ │ │ │ systems with no webserver, or when direct integration with │ │
│ │ │ │ the local webserver is not supported or not desired. │ │
├────────────┼──────┼──────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┤
│DNS plugins │ Y │ N │ This category of plugins automates obtaining a certificate by │ dns-01 (53) │
│ │ │ │ modifying DNS records to prove you have control over a │ │
│ │ │ │ domain. Doing domain validation in this way is │ │
│ │ │ │ the only way to obtain wildcard certificates from Let's │ │
│ │ │ │ Encrypt. │ │
├────────────┼──────┼──────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┤
│manual │ Y │ N │ Obtain a certificate by manually following instructions to │ http-01 (80) │
│ │ │ │ perform domain validation yourself. Certificates created this │ or dns-01 │
│ │ │ │ way do not support autorenewal. │ (53) │
│ │ │ │ Autorenewal may be enabled by providing an authentication │ │
│ │ │ │ hook script to automate the domain validation steps. │ │
└────────────┴──────┴──────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────┘
Under the hood, plugins use one of several ACME protocol challenges to
prove you control a domain. The options are http-01 (which uses port
80) and dns-01 (requiring configuration of a DNS server on port 53,
though that's often not the same machine as your webserver). A few
plugins support more than one challenge type, in which case you can
choose one with --preferred-challenges.
There are also many third-party-plugins available. Below we describe in
more detail the circumstances in which each plugin can be used, and how
to use it.
Apache
The Apache plugin currently supports modern OSes based on Debian, Fe-
dora, SUSE, Gentoo, CentOS and Darwin. This automates both obtaining
and installing certificates on an Apache webserver. To specify this
plugin on the command line, simply include --apache.
Webroot
If you're running a local webserver for which you have the ability to
modify the content being served, and you'd prefer not to stop the web-
server during the certificate issuance process, you can use the webroot
plugin to obtain a certificate by including certonly and --webroot on
the command line. In addition, you'll need to specify --webroot-path or
-w with the top-level directory ("web root") containing the files
served by your webserver. For example, --webroot-path /var/www/html or
--webroot-path /usr/share/nginx/html are two common webroot paths.
If you're getting a certificate for many domains at once, the plugin
needs to know where each domain's files are served from, which could
potentially be a separate directory for each domain. When requesting a
certificate for multiple domains, each domain will use the most re-
cently specified --webroot-path. So, for instance,
certbot certonly --webroot -w /var/www/example -d www.example.com -d example.com -w /var/www/other -d other.example.net -d another.other.example.net
would obtain a single certificate for all of those names, using the
/var/www/example webroot directory for the first two, and
/var/www/other for the second two.
The webroot plugin works by creating a temporary file for each of your
requested domains in ${webroot-path}/.well-known/acme-challenge. Then
the Let's Encrypt validation server makes HTTP requests to validate
that the DNS for each requested domain resolves to the server running
certbot. An example request made to your web server would look like:
66.133.109.36 - - [05/Jan/2016:20:11:24 -0500] "GET /.well-known/acme-challenge/HGr8U1IeTW4kY_Z6UIyaakzOkyQgPr_7ArlLgtZE8SX HTTP/1.1" 200 87 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Let's Encrypt validation server; +https://www.letsencrypt.org)"
Note that to use the webroot plugin, your server must be configured to
serve files from hidden directories. If /.well-known is treated spe-
cially by your webserver configuration, you might need to modify the
configuration to ensure that files inside /.well-known/acme-challenge
are served by the webserver.
Under Windows, Certbot will generate a web.config file, if one does not
already exist, in /.well-known/acme-challenge in order to let IIS serve
the challenge files even if they do not have an extension.
Nginx
The Nginx plugin should work for most configurations. We recommend
backing up Nginx configurations before using it (though you can also
revert changes to configurations with certbot --nginx rollback). You
can use it by providing the --nginx flag on the commandline.
certbot --nginx
Standalone
Use standalone mode to obtain a certificate if you don't want to use
(or don't currently have) existing server software. The standalone
plugin does not rely on any other server software running on the ma-
chine where you obtain the certificate.
To obtain a certificate using a "standalone" webserver, you can use the
standalone plugin by including certonly and --standalone on the command
line. This plugin needs to bind to port 80 in order to perform domain
validation, so you may need to stop your existing webserver.
It must still be possible for your machine to accept inbound connec-
tions from the Internet on the specified port using each requested do-
main name.
By default, Certbot first attempts to bind to the port for all inter-
faces using IPv6 and then bind to that port using IPv4; Certbot contin-
ues so long as at least one bind succeeds. On most Linux systems, IPv4
traffic will be routed to the bound IPv6 port and the failure during
the second bind is expected.
Use --<challenge-type>-address to explicitly tell Certbot which inter-
face (and protocol) to bind.
DNS Plugins
If you'd like to obtain a wildcard certificate from Let's Encrypt or
run certbot on a machine other than your target webserver, you can use
one of Certbot's DNS plugins.
These plugins are not included in a default Certbot installation and
must be installed separately. They are available in many OS package
managers, as Docker images, and as snaps. Visit https://certbot.eff.org
to learn the best way to use the DNS plugins on your system.
Once installed, you can find documentation on how to use each plugin
at:
• certbot-dns-cloudflare
• certbot-dns-digitalocean
• certbot-dns-dnsimple
• certbot-dns-dnsmadeeasy
• certbot-dns-gehirn
• certbot-dns-google
• certbot-dns-linode
• certbot-dns-luadns
• certbot-dns-nsone
• certbot-dns-ovh
• certbot-dns-rfc2136
• certbot-dns-route53
• certbot-dns-sakuracloud
Manual
If you'd like to obtain a certificate running certbot on a machine
other than your target webserver or perform the steps for domain vali-
dation yourself, you can use the manual plugin. While hidden from the
UI, you can use the plugin to obtain a certificate by specifying cer-
tonly and --manual on the command line. This requires you to copy and
paste commands into another terminal session, which may be on a differ-
ent computer.
The manual plugin can use either the http or the dns challenge. You can
use the --preferred-challenges option to choose the challenge of your
preference.
The http challenge will ask you to place a file with a specific name
and specific content in the /.well-known/acme-challenge/ directory di-
rectly in the top-level directory (“web root”) containing the files
served by your webserver. In essence it's the same as the webroot
plugin, but not automated.
When using the dns challenge, certbot will ask you to place a TXT DNS
record with specific contents under the domain name consisting of the
hostname for which you want a certificate issued, prepended by
_acme-challenge.
For example, for the domain example.com, a zone file entry would look
like:
_acme-challenge.example.com. 300 IN TXT "gfj9Xq...Rg85nM"
Renewal with the manual plugin
Certificates created using --manual do not support automatic renewal
unless combined with an authentication hook script via --man-
ual-auth-hook to automatically set up the required HTTP and/or TXT
challenges.
If you can use one of the other plugins which support autorenewal to
create your certificate, doing so is highly recommended.
To manually renew a certificate using --manual without hooks, repeat
the same certbot --manual command you used to create the certificate
originally. As this will require you to copy and paste new HTTP files
or DNS TXT records, the command cannot be automated with a cron job.
Combining plugins
Sometimes you may want to specify a combination of distinct authentica-
tor and installer plugins. To do so, specify the authenticator plugin
with --authenticator or -a and the installer plugin with --installer or
-i.
For instance, you could create a certificate using the webroot plugin
for authentication and the apache plugin for installation.
certbot run -a webroot -i apache -w /var/www/html -d example.com
Or you could create a certificate using the manual plugin for authenti-
cation and the nginx plugin for installation. (Note that this certifi-
cate cannot be renewed automatically.)
certbot run -a manual -i nginx -d example.com
Third-party plugins
There are also a number of third-party plugins for the client, provided
by other developers. Many are beta/experimental, but some are already
in widespread use:
┌────────────────┬──────┬──────┬──────────────────┐
│Plugin │ Auth │ Inst │ Notes │
├────────────────┼──────┼──────┼──────────────────┤
│haproxy │ Y │ Y │ Integration with │
│ │ │ │ the HAProxy load │
│ │ │ │ balancer │
└────────────────┴──────┴──────┴──────────────────┘
│s3front │ Y │ Y │ Integration with │
│ │ │ │ Amazon Cloud- │
│ │ │ │ Front distribu- │
│ │ │ │ tion of S3 buck- │
│ │ │ │ ets │
├────────────────┼──────┼──────┼──────────────────┤
│gandi │ Y │ N │ Obtain certifi- │
│ │ │ │ cates via the │
│ │ │ │ Gandi LiveDNS │
│ │ │ │ API │
├────────────────┼──────┼──────┼──────────────────┤
│varnish │ Y │ N │ Obtain certifi- │
│ │ │ │ cates via a Var- │
│ │ │ │ nish server │
├────────────────┼──────┼──────┼──────────────────┤
│external-auth │ Y │ Y │ A plugin for │
│ │ │ │ convenient │
│ │ │ │ scripting │
├────────────────┼──────┼──────┼──────────────────┤
│pritunl │ N │ Y │ Install certifi- │
│ │ │ │ cates in pritunl │
│ │ │ │ distributed │
│ │ │ │ OpenVPN servers │
├────────────────┼──────┼──────┼──────────────────┤
│proxmox │ N │ Y │ Install certifi- │
│ │ │ │ cates in Proxmox │
│ │ │ │ Virtualization │
│ │ │ │ servers │
├────────────────┼──────┼──────┼──────────────────┤
│dns-standalone │ Y │ N │ Obtain certifi- │
│ │ │ │ cates via an in- │
│ │ │ │ tegrated DNS │
│ │ │ │ server │
├────────────────┼──────┼──────┼──────────────────┤
│dns-ispconfig │ Y │ N │ DNS Authentica- │
│ │ │ │ tion using ISP- │
│ │ │ │ Config as DNS │
│ │ │ │ server │
├────────────────┼──────┼──────┼──────────────────┤
│dns-clouddns │ Y │ N │ DNS Authentica- │
│ │ │ │ tion using │
│ │ │ │ CloudDNS API │
├────────────────┼──────┼──────┼──────────────────┤
│dns-lightsail │ Y │ N │ DNS Authentica- │
│ │ │ │ tion using Ama- │
│ │ │ │ zon Lightsail │
│ │ │ │ DNS API │
├────────────────┼──────┼──────┼──────────────────┤
│dns-inwx │ Y │ Y │ DNS Authentica- │
│ │ │ │ tion for INWX │
│ │ │ │ through the XML │
│ │ │ │ API │
├────────────────┼──────┼──────┼──────────────────┤
│dns-azure │ Y │ N │ DNS Authentica- │
│ │ │ │ tion using Azure │
│ │ │ │ DNS │
├────────────────┼──────┼──────┼──────────────────┤
│dns-godaddy │ Y │ N │ DNS Authentica- │
│ │ │ │ tion using Go- │
│ │ │ │ daddy DNS │
├────────────────┼──────┼──────┼──────────────────┤
│dns-yandexcloud │ Y │ N │ DNS Authentica- │
│ │ │ │ tion using Yan- │
│ │ │ │ dex Cloud DNS │
└────────────────┴──────┴──────┴──────────────────┘
│dns-bunny │ Y │ N │ DNS Authentica- │
│ │ │ │ tion using Bun- │
│ │ │ │ nyDNS │
├────────────────┼──────┼──────┼──────────────────┤
│njalla │ Y │ N │ DNS Authentica- │
│ │ │ │ tion for njalla │
├────────────────┼──────┼──────┼──────────────────┤
│DuckDNS │ Y │ N │ DNS Authentica- │
│ │ │ │ tion for DuckDNS │
├────────────────┼──────┼──────┼──────────────────┤
│Porkbun │ Y │ N │ DNS Authentica- │
│ │ │ │ tion for Porkbun │
├────────────────┼──────┼──────┼──────────────────┤
│Infomaniak │ Y │ N │ DNS Authentica- │
│ │ │ │ tion using Info- │
│ │ │ │ maniak Domains │
│ │ │ │ API │
├────────────────┼──────┼──────┼──────────────────┤
│dns-multi │ Y │ N │ DNS authentica- │
│ │ │ │ tion of 100+ │
│ │ │ │ providers using │
│ │ │ │ go-acme/lego │
└────────────────┴──────┴──────┴──────────────────┘
If you're interested, you can also write your own plugin.
Managing certificates
To view a list of the certificates Certbot knows about, run the cer-
tificates subcommand:
certbot certificates
This returns information in the following format:
Found the following certificates:
Certificate Name: example.com
Domains: example.com, www.example.com
Expiry Date: 2017-02-19 19:53:00+00:00 (VALID: 30 days)
Certificate Path: /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem
Key Type: RSA
Private Key Path: /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/privkey.pem
Certificate Name shows the name of the certificate. Pass this name us-
ing the --cert-name flag to specify a particular certificate for the
run, certonly, certificates, renew, and delete commands. Example:
certbot certonly --cert-name example.com
Re-creating and Updating Existing Certificates
You can use certonly or run subcommands to request the creation of a
single new certificate even if you already have an existing certificate
with some of the same domain names.
If a certificate is requested with run or certonly specifying a cer-
tificate name that already exists, Certbot updates the existing cer-
tificate. Otherwise a new certificate is created and assigned the spec-
ified name.
The --force-renewal, --duplicate, and --expand options control Cert-
bot's behavior when re-creating a certificate with the same name as an
existing certificate. If you don't specify a requested behavior, Cert-
bot may ask you what you intended.
--force-renewal tells Certbot to request a new certificate with the
same domains as an existing certificate. Each domain must be explicitly
specified via -d. If successful, this certificate is saved alongside
the earlier one and symbolic links (the "live" reference) will be up-
dated to point to the new certificate. This is a valid method of renew-
ing a specific individual certificate.
--duplicate tells Certbot to create a separate, unrelated certificate
with the same domains as an existing certificate. This certificate is
saved completely separately from the prior one. Most users will not
need to issue this command in normal circumstances.
--expand tells Certbot to update an existing certificate with a new
certificate that contains all of the old domains and one or more addi-
tional new domains. With the --expand option, use the -d option to
specify all existing domains and one or more new domains.
Example:
certbot --expand -d existing.com,example.com,newdomain.com
If you prefer, you can specify the domains individually like this:
certbot --expand -d existing.com -d example.com -d newdomain.com
Consider using --cert-name instead of --expand, as it gives more con-
trol over which certificate is modified and it lets you remove domains
as well as adding them.
--allow-subset-of-names tells Certbot to continue with certificate gen-
eration if only some of the specified domain authorizations can be ob-
tained. This may be useful if some domains specified in a certificate
no longer point at this system.
Whenever you obtain a new certificate in any of these ways, the new
certificate exists alongside any previously obtained certificates,
whether or not the previous certificates have expired. The generation
of a new certificate counts against several rate limits that are in-
tended to prevent abuse of the ACME protocol, as described here.
Changing a Certificate's Domains
The --cert-name flag can also be used to modify the domains a certifi-
cate contains, by specifying new domains using the -d or --domains
flag. If certificate example.com previously contained example.com and
www.example.com, it can be modified to only contain example.com by
specifying only example.com with the -d or --domains flag. Example:
certbot certonly --cert-name example.com -d example.com
The same format can be used to expand the set of domains a certificate
contains, or to replace that set entirely:
certbot certonly --cert-name example.com -d example.org,www.example.org
RSA and ECDSA keys
Certbot supports two certificate private key algorithms: rsa and ecdsa.
As of version 2.0.0, Certbot defaults to ECDSA secp256r1 (P-256) cer-
tificate private keys for all new certificates. Existing certificates
will continue to renew using their existing key type, unless a key type
change is requested.
The type of key used by Certbot can be controlled through the
--key-type option. You can use the --elliptic-curve option to control
the curve used in ECDSA certificates and the --rsa-key-size option to
control the size of RSA keys.
WARNING:
If you obtain certificates using ECDSA keys, you should be careful
not to downgrade to a Certbot version earlier than 1.10.0 where
ECDSA keys were not supported. Downgrades like this are possible if
you switch from something like the snaps or pip to packages provided
by your operating system which often lag behind.
Changing a certificate's key type
Unless you are aware that you need to support very old HTTPS clients
that are not supported by most sites, you can safely transition your
site to use ECDSA keys instead of RSA keys.
If you want to change a single certificate to use ECDSA keys, you'll
need to create or renew a certificate while setting --key-type ecdsa on
the command line:
certbot renew --key-type ecdsa --cert-name example.com --force-renewal
If you want to use ECDSA keys for all certificates in the future (in-
cluding renewals of existing certificates), you can add the following
line to Certbot's configuration file:
key-type = ecdsa
which will take effect upon the next renewal of each certificate.
Revoking certificates
If you need to revoke a certificate, use the revoke subcommand to do
so.
A certificate may be revoked by providing its name (see certbot cer-
tificates) or by providing its path directly:
certbot revoke --cert-name example.com
certbot revoke --cert-path /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/cert.pem
If the certificate being revoked was obtained via the --staging,
--test-cert or a non-default --server flag, that flag must be passed to
the revoke subcommand.
NOTE:
After revocation, Certbot will (by default) ask whether you want to
delete the certificate. Unless deleted, Certbot will try to renew
revoked certificates the next time certbot renew runs.
You can also specify the reason for revoking your certificate by using
the reason flag. Reasons include unspecified which is the default, as
well as keycompromise, affiliationchanged, superseded, and cessationof-
operation:
certbot revoke --cert-name example.com --reason keycompromise
Revoking by account key or certificate private key
By default, Certbot will try revoke the certificate using your ACME ac-
count key. If the certificate was created from the same ACME account,
the revocation will be successful.
If you instead have the corresponding private key file to the certifi-
cate you wish to revoke, use --key-path to perform the revocation from
any ACME account:
certbot revoke --cert-path /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/cert.pem --key-path /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/privkey.pem
Deleting certificates
If you need to delete a certificate, use the delete subcommand.
NOTE:
Read this and the Safely deleting certificates sections carefully.
This is an irreversible operation and must be done with care.
Certbot does not automatically revoke a certificate before deleting it.
If you're no longer using a certificate and don't plan to use it any-
where else, you may want to follow the instructions in Revoking cer-
tificates instead. Generally, there's no need to revoke a certificate
if its private key has not been compromised, but you may still receive
expiration emails from Let's Encrypt unless you revoke.
NOTE:
Do not manually delete certificate files from inside /etc/letsen-
crypt/. Always use the delete subcommand.
A certificate may be deleted by providing its name with --cert-name.
You may find its name using certbot certificates.
Otherwise, you will be prompted to choose one or more certificates to
delete:
certbot delete --cert-name example.com
# or to choose from a list:
certbot delete
Safely deleting certificates
Deleting a certificate without following the proper steps can result in
a non-functioning server. To safely delete a certificate, follow all
the steps below to make sure that references to a certificate are re-
moved from the configuration of any installed server software (Apache,
nginx, Postfix, etc) before deleting the certificate.
To explain further, when installing a certificate, Certbot modifies
Apache or nginx's configuration to load the certificate and its private
key from the /etc/letsencrypt/live/ directory. Before deleting a cer-
tificate, it is necessary to undo that modification, by removing any
references to the certificate from the webserver's configuration files.
Follow these steps to safely delete a certificate:
1. Find all references to the certificate (substitute example.com in
the command for the name of the certificate you wish to delete):
sudo bash -c 'grep -R live/example.com /etc/{nginx,httpd,apache2}'
If there are no references found, skip directly to Step 4.
If some references are found, they will look something like:
/etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default-le-ssl.conf:SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem
/etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default-le-ssl.conf:SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/privkey.pem
2. You will need a self-signed certificate to replace the certificate
you are deleting. The following command will generate one for you,
saving the certificate at /etc/letsencrypt/self-signed-cert.pem and
its private key at /etc/letsencrypt/self-signed-privkey.pem:
sudo openssl req -nodes -batch -x509 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout /etc/letsencrypt/self-signed-privkey.pem -out /etc/letsencrypt/self-signed-cert.pem -days 356
3. For each reference found in Step 1, open the file in a text editor
and replace the reference to the existing certificate with a refer-
ence to the self-signed certificate.
Continuing from the previous example, you would open
/etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default-le-ssl.conf in a text edi-
tor and modify the two matching lines of text to instead say:
SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/self-signed-cert.pem
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/self-signed-privkey.pem
4. It is now safe to delete the certificate. Do so by running:
sudo certbot delete --cert-name example.com
Renewing certificates
NOTE:
Let's Encrypt CA issues short-lived certificates (90 days). Make
sure you renew the certificates at least once in 3 months.
SEE ALSO:
Most Certbot installations come with automatic renewal out of the
box. See Automated Renewals for more details.
SEE ALSO:
Users of the Manual plugin should note that --manual certificates
will not renew automatically, unless combined with authentication
hook scripts. See Renewal with the manual plugin.
As of version 0.10.0, Certbot supports a renew action to check all in-
stalled certificates for impending expiry and attempt to renew them.
The simplest form is simply
certbot renew
This command attempts to renew any previously-obtained certificates
that expire in less than 30 days. The same plugin and options that were
used at the time the certificate was originally issued will be used for
the renewal attempt, unless you specify other plugins or options. Un-
like certonly, renew acts on multiple certificates and always takes
into account whether each one is near expiry. Because of this, renew is
suitable (and designed) for automated use, to allow your system to au-
tomatically renew each certificate when appropriate. Since renew only
renews certificates that are near expiry it can be run as frequently as
you want - since it will usually take no action.
The renew command includes hooks for running commands or scripts before
or after a certificate is renewed. For example, if you have a single
certificate obtained using the standalone plugin, you might need to
stop the webserver before renewing so standalone can bind to the neces-
sary ports, and then restart it after the plugin is finished. Example:
certbot renew --pre-hook "service nginx stop" --post-hook "service nginx start"
If a hook exits with a non-zero exit code, the error will be printed to
stderr but renewal will be attempted anyway. A failing hook doesn't di-
rectly cause Certbot to exit with a non-zero exit code, but since Cert-
bot exits with a non-zero exit code when renewals fail, a failed hook
causing renewal failures will indirectly result in a non-zero exit
code. Hooks will only be run if a certificate is due for renewal, so
you can run the above command frequently without unnecessarily stopping
your webserver.
When Certbot detects that a certificate is due for renewal, --pre-hook
and --post-hook hooks run before and after each attempt to renew it.
If you want your hook to run only after a successful renewal, use --de-
ploy-hook in a command like this.
certbot renew --deploy-hook /path/to/deploy-hook-script
You can also specify hooks by placing files in subdirectories of Cert-
bot's configuration directory. Assuming your configuration directory is
/etc/letsencrypt, any executable files found in /etc/letsencrypt/re-
newal-hooks/pre, /etc/letsencrypt/renewal-hooks/deploy, and
/etc/letsencrypt/renewal-hooks/post will be run as pre, deploy, and
post hooks respectively when any certificate is renewed with the renew
subcommand. These hooks are run in alphabetical order and are not run
for other subcommands. (The order the hooks are run is determined by
the byte value of the characters in their filenames and is not depen-
dent on your locale.)
Hooks specified in the command line, configuration file, or renewal
configuration files are run as usual after running all hooks in these
directories. One minor exception to this is if a hook specified else-
where is simply the path to an executable file in the hook directory of
the same type (e.g. your pre-hook is the path to an executable in
/etc/letsencrypt/renewal-hooks/pre), the file is not run a second time.
You can stop Certbot from automatically running executables found in
these directories by including --no-directory-hooks on the command
line.
More information about hooks can be found by running certbot --help re-
new.
If you're sure that this command executes successfully without human
intervention, you can add the command to crontab (since certificates
are only renewed when they're determined to be near expiry, the command
can run on a regular basis, like every week or every day). In that
case, you are likely to want to use the -q or --quiet quiet flag to si-
lence all output except errors.
If you are manually renewing all of your certificates, the --force-re-
newal flag may be helpful; it causes the expiration time of the cer-
tificate(s) to be ignored when considering renewal, and attempts to re-
new each and every installed certificate regardless of its age. (This
form is not appropriate to run daily because each certificate will be
renewed every day, which will quickly run into the certificate author-
ity rate limit.)
Note that options provided to certbot renew will apply to every cer-
tificate for which renewal is attempted; for example, certbot renew
--rsa-key-size 4096 would try to replace every near-expiry certificate
with an equivalent certificate using a 4096-bit RSA public key. If a
certificate is successfully renewed using specified options, those op-
tions will be saved and used for future renewals of that certificate.
An alternative form that provides for more fine-grained control over
the renewal process (while renewing specified certificates one at a
time), is certbot certonly with the complete set of subject domains of
a specific certificate specified via -d flags. You may also want to in-
clude the -n or --noninteractive flag to prevent blocking on user input
(which is useful when running the command from cron).
certbot certonly -n -d example.com -d www.example.com
All of the domains covered by the certificate must be specified in this
case in order to renew and replace the old certificate rather than ob-
taining a new one; don't forget any www. domains! Specifying a subset
of the domains creates a new, separate certificate containing only
those domains, rather than replacing the original certificate. When
run with a set of domains corresponding to an existing certificate, the
certonly command attempts to renew that specific certificate.
Please note that the CA will send notification emails to the address
you provide if you do not renew certificates that are about to expire.
Certbot is working hard to improve the renewal process, and we apolo-
gize for any inconvenience you encounter in integrating these commands
into your individual environment.
NOTE:
certbot renew exit status will only be 1 if a renewal attempt
failed. This means certbot renew exit status will be 0 if no cer-
tificate needs to be updated. If you write a custom script and ex-
pect to run a command only after a certificate was actually renewed
you will need to use the --deploy-hook since the exit status will be
0 both on successful renewal and when renewal is not necessary.
Modifying the Renewal Configuration of Existing Certificates
When creating a certificate, Certbot will keep track of all of the rel-
evant options chosen by the user. At renewal time, Certbot will remem-
ber these options and apply them once again.
Sometimes, you may encounter the need to change some of these options
for future certificate renewals. To achieve this, you will need to per-
form the following steps:
1. Perform a dry run renewal with the amended options on the command
line. This allows you to confirm that the change is valid and will
result in successful future renewals.
2. If the dry run is successful, perform a live renewal of the certifi-
cate. This will persist the change for future renewals. If the cer-
tificate is not yet due to expire, you will need to force a renewal
using --force-renewal.
NOTE:
Rate limits from the certificate authority may prevent you from per-
forming multiple renewals in a short period of time. It is strongly
recommended to perform the second step only once, when you have de-
cided on what options should change.
As a practical example, if you were using the webroot authenticator and
had relocated your website to another directory, you would need to
change the --webroot-path to the new directory. Following the above ad-
vice:
1. Perform a dry-run renewal of the individual certificate with the
amended options:
certbot renew --cert-name example.com --webroot-path /path/to/new/location --dry-run
2. If the dry-run was successful, make the change permanent by perform-
ing a live renewal of the certificate with the amended options, in-
cluding --force-renewal:
certbot renew --cert-name example.com --webroot-path /path/to/new/location --force-renewal
--cert-name selects the particular certificate to be modified. With-
out this option, all certificates will be selected.
--webroot-path is the option intended to be changed. All other pre-
viously selected options will be kept the same and do not need to be
included in the command.
For advanced certificate management tasks, it is also possible to manu-
ally modify the certificate's renewal configuration file, but this is
discouraged since it can easily break Certbot's ability to renew your
certificates. These renewal configuration files are located at
/etc/letsencrypt/renewal/CERTNAME.conf. If you choose to modify the re-
newal configuration file we advise you to make a backup of the file be-
forehand and test its validity with the certbot renew --dry-run com-
mand.
WARNING:
Manually modifying files under /etc/letsencrypt/renewal/ can damage
them if done improperly and we do not recommend doing so.
Automated Renewals
Most Certbot installations come with automatic renewals preconfigured.
This is done by means of a scheduled task which runs certbot renew pe-
riodically.
If you are unsure whether you need to configure automated renewal:
1. Review the instructions for your system and installation method at
https://certbot.eff.org/instructions. They will describe how to set
up a scheduled task, if necessary. If no step is listed, your system
comes with automated renewal pre-installed, and you should not need
to take any additional actions.
2. On Linux and BSD, you can check to see if your installation method
has pre-installed a timer for you. To do so, look for the certbot
renew command in either your system's crontab (typically
/etc/crontab or /etc/cron.*/*) or systemd timers (systemctl
list-timers).
3. If you're still not sure, you can configure automated renewal manu-
ally by following the steps in the next section. Certbot has been
carefully engineered to handle the case where both manual automated
renewal and pre-installed automated renewal are set up.
Setting up automated renewal
If you think you may need to set up automated renewal, follow these in-
structions to set up a scheduled task to automatically renew your cer-
tificates in the background. If you are unsure whether your system has
a pre-installed scheduled task for Certbot, it is safe to follow these
instructions to create one.
NOTE:
If you're using Windows, these instructions are not neccessary as
Certbot on Windows comes with a scheduled task for automated renewal
pre-installed.
If you are using macOS and installed Certbot using Homebrew, follow
the instructions at https://certbot.eff.org/instructions to set up
automated renewal. The instructions below are not applicable on
macOS.
Run the following line, which will add a cron job to /etc/crontab:
SLEEPTIME=$(awk 'BEGIN{srand(); print int(rand()*(3600+1))}'); echo "0 0,12 * * * root sleep $SLEEPTIME && certbot renew -q" | sudo tee -a /etc/crontab > /dev/null
If you needed to stop your webserver to run Certbot, you'll want to add
pre and post hooks to stop and start your webserver automatically. For
example, if your webserver is HAProxy, run the following commands to
create the hook files in the appropriate directory:
sudo sh -c 'printf "#!/bin/sh\nservice haproxy stop\n" > /etc/letsencrypt/renewal-hooks/pre/haproxy.sh'
sudo sh -c 'printf "#!/bin/sh\nservice haproxy start\n" > /etc/letsencrypt/renewal-hooks/post/haproxy.sh'
sudo chmod 755 /etc/letsencrypt/renewal-hooks/pre/haproxy.sh
sudo chmod 755 /etc/letsencrypt/renewal-hooks/post/haproxy.sh
Congratulations, Certbot will now automatically renew your certificates
in the background.
If you are interested in learning more about how Certbot renews your
certificates, see the Renewing certificates section above.
Where are my certificates?
All generated keys and issued certificates can be found in /etc/letsen-
crypt/live/$domain, where $domain is the certificate name (see the note
below). Rather than copying, please point your (web) server configura-
tion directly to those files (or create symlinks). During the renewal,
/etc/letsencrypt/live is updated with the latest necessary files.
NOTE:
The certificate name $domain used in the path /etc/letsen-
crypt/live/$domain follows this convention:
• it is the name given to --cert-name,
• if --cert-name is not set by the user it is the first domain given
to --domains,
• if the first domain is a wildcard domain (eg. *.example.com) the
certificate name will be example.com,
• if a name collision would occur with a certificate already named
example.com, the new certificate name will be constructed using a
numerical sequence as example.com-001.
For historical reasons, the containing directories are created with
permissions of 0700 meaning that certificates are accessible only to
servers that run as the root user. If you will never downgrade to an
older version of Certbot, then you can safely fix this using chmod 0755
/etc/letsencrypt/{live,archive}.
For servers that drop root privileges before attempting to read the
private key file, you will also need to use chgrp and chmod 0640 to al-
low the server to read /etc/letsencrypt/live/$domain/privkey.pem.
NOTE:
/etc/letsencrypt/archive and /etc/letsencrypt/keys contain all pre-
vious keys and certificates, while /etc/letsencrypt/live symlinks to
the latest versions.
The following files are available:
privkey.pem
Private key for the certificate.
WARNING:
This must be kept secret at all times! Never share it with
anyone, including Certbot developers. You cannot put it into
a safe, however - your server still needs to access this file
in order for SSL/TLS to work.
NOTE:
As of Certbot version 0.29.0, private keys for new certifi-
cate default to 0600. Any changes to the group mode or group
owner (gid) of this file will be preserved on renewals.
This is what Apache needs for SSLCertificateKeyFile, and Nginx
for ssl_certificate_key.
fullchain.pem
All certificates, including server certificate (aka leaf cer-
tificate or end-entity certificate). The server certificate is
the first one in this file, followed by any intermediates.
This is what Apache >= 2.4.8 needs for SSLCertificateFile, and
what Nginx needs for ssl_certificate.
cert.pem and chain.pem (less common)
cert.pem contains the server certificate by itself, and
chain.pem contains the additional intermediate certificate or
certificates that web browsers will need in order to validate
the server certificate. If you provide one of these files to
your web server, you must provide both of them, or some browsers
will show "This Connection is Untrusted" errors for your site,
some of the time.
Apache < 2.4.8 needs these for SSLCertificateFile. and
SSLCertificateChainFile, respectively.
If you're using OCSP stapling with Nginx >= 1.3.7, chain.pem
should be provided as the ssl_trusted_certificate to validate
OCSP responses.
NOTE:
All files are PEM-encoded. If you need other format, such as DER or
PFX, then you could convert using openssl. You can automate that
with --deploy-hook if you're using automatic renewal.
Pre and Post Validation Hooks
Certbot allows for the specification of pre and post validation hooks
when run in manual mode. The flags to specify these scripts are --man-
ual-auth-hook and --manual-cleanup-hook respectively and can be used as
follows:
certbot certonly --manual --manual-auth-hook /path/to/http/authenticator.sh --manual-cleanup-hook /path/to/http/cleanup.sh -d secure.example.com
This will run the authenticator.sh script, attempt the validation, and
then run the cleanup.sh script. Additionally certbot will pass relevant
environment variables to these scripts:
• CERTBOT_DOMAIN: The domain being authenticated
• CERTBOT_VALIDATION: The validation string
• CERTBOT_TOKEN: Resource name part of the HTTP-01 challenge (HTTP-01
only)
• CERTBOT_REMAINING_CHALLENGES: Number of challenges remaining after
the current challenge
• CERTBOT_ALL_DOMAINS: A comma-separated list of all domains challenged
for the current certificate
Additionally for cleanup:
• CERTBOT_AUTH_OUTPUT: Whatever the auth script wrote to stdout
Example usage for HTTP-01:
certbot certonly --manual --preferred-challenges=http --manual-auth-hook /path/to/http/authenticator.sh --manual-cleanup-hook /path/to/http/cleanup.sh -d secure.example.com
/path/to/http/authenticator.sh
#!/bin/bash
echo $CERTBOT_VALIDATION > /var/www/htdocs/.well-known/acme-challenge/$CERTBOT_TOKEN
/path/to/http/cleanup.sh
#!/bin/bash
rm -f /var/www/htdocs/.well-known/acme-challenge/$CERTBOT_TOKEN
Example usage for DNS-01 (Cloudflare API v4) (for example purposes
only, do not use as-is)
certbot certonly --manual --preferred-challenges=dns --manual-auth-hook /path/to/dns/authenticator.sh --manual-cleanup-hook /path/to/dns/cleanup.sh -d secure.example.com
/path/to/dns/authenticator.sh
#!/bin/bash
# Get your API key from https://www.cloudflare.com/a/account/my-account
API_KEY="your-api-key"
EMAIL="your.email@example.com"
# Strip only the top domain to get the zone id
DOMAIN=$(expr match "$CERTBOT_DOMAIN" '.*\.\(.*\..*\)')
# Get the Cloudflare zone id
ZONE_EXTRA_PARAMS="status=active&page=1&per_page=20&order=status&direction=desc&match=all"
ZONE_ID=$(curl -s -X GET "https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/zones?name=$DOMAIN&$ZONE_EXTRA_PARAMS" \
-H "X-Auth-Email: $EMAIL" \
-H "X-Auth-Key: $API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" | python -c "import sys,json;print(json.load(sys.stdin)['result'][0]['id'])")
# Create TXT record
CREATE_DOMAIN="_acme-challenge.$CERTBOT_DOMAIN"
RECORD_ID=$(curl -s -X POST "https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/zones/$ZONE_ID/dns_records" \
-H "X-Auth-Email: $EMAIL" \
-H "X-Auth-Key: $API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
--data '{"type":"TXT","name":"'"$CREATE_DOMAIN"'","content":"'"$CERTBOT_VALIDATION"'","ttl":120}' \
| python -c "import sys,json;print(json.load(sys.stdin)['result']['id'])")
# Save info for cleanup
if [ ! -d /tmp/CERTBOT_$CERTBOT_DOMAIN ];then
mkdir -m 0700 /tmp/CERTBOT_$CERTBOT_DOMAIN
fi
echo $ZONE_ID > /tmp/CERTBOT_$CERTBOT_DOMAIN/ZONE_ID
echo $RECORD_ID > /tmp/CERTBOT_$CERTBOT_DOMAIN/RECORD_ID
# Sleep to make sure the change has time to propagate over to DNS
sleep 25
/path/to/dns/cleanup.sh
#!/bin/bash
# Get your API key from https://www.cloudflare.com/a/account/my-account
API_KEY="your-api-key"
EMAIL="your.email@example.com"
if [ -f /tmp/CERTBOT_$CERTBOT_DOMAIN/ZONE_ID ]; then
ZONE_ID=$(cat /tmp/CERTBOT_$CERTBOT_DOMAIN/ZONE_ID)
rm -f /tmp/CERTBOT_$CERTBOT_DOMAIN/ZONE_ID
fi
if [ -f /tmp/CERTBOT_$CERTBOT_DOMAIN/RECORD_ID ]; then
RECORD_ID=$(cat /tmp/CERTBOT_$CERTBOT_DOMAIN/RECORD_ID)
rm -f /tmp/CERTBOT_$CERTBOT_DOMAIN/RECORD_ID
fi
# Remove the challenge TXT record from the zone
if [ -n "${ZONE_ID}" ]; then
if [ -n "${RECORD_ID}" ]; then
curl -s -X DELETE "https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/zones/$ZONE_ID/dns_records/$RECORD_ID" \
-H "X-Auth-Email: $EMAIL" \
-H "X-Auth-Key: $API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json"
fi
fi
Changing the ACME Server
By default, Certbot uses Let's Encrypt's production server at
https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory. You can tell Certbot to
use a different CA by providing --server on the command line or in a
configuration file with the URL of the server's ACME directory. For ex-
ample, if you would like to use Let's Encrypt's staging server, you
would add --server https://acme-staging-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/direc-
tory to the command line.
If Certbot does not trust the SSL certificate used by the ACME server,
you can use the REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE environment variable to override the
root certificates trusted by Certbot. Certbot uses the requests li-
brary, which does not use the operating system trusted root store.
If you use --server to specify an ACME CA that implements the standard-
ized version of the spec, you may be able to obtain a certificate for a
wildcard domain. Some CAs (such as Let's Encrypt) require that domain
validation for wildcard domains must be done through modifications to
DNS records which means that the dns-01 challenge type must be used. To
see a list of Certbot plugins that support this challenge type and how
to use them, see plugins.
Lock Files
When processing a validation Certbot writes a number of lock files on
your system to prevent multiple instances from overwriting each other's
changes. This means that by default two instances of Certbot will not
be able to run in parallel.
Since the directories used by Certbot are configurable, Certbot will
write a lock file for all of the directories it uses. This include
Certbot's --work-dir, --logs-dir, and --config-dir. By default these
are /var/lib/letsencrypt, /var/log/letsencrypt, and /etc/letsencrypt
respectively. Additionally if you are using Certbot with Apache or ng-
inx it will lock the configuration folder for that program, which are
typically also in the /etc directory.
Note that these lock files will only prevent other instances of Certbot
from using those directories, not other processes. If you'd like to run
multiple instances of Certbot simultaneously you should specify differ-
ent directories as the --work-dir, --logs-dir, and --config-dir for
each instance of Certbot that you would like to run.
Configuration file
Certbot accepts a global configuration file that applies its options to
all invocations of Certbot. Certificate specific configuration choices
should be set in the .conf files that can be found in /etc/letsen-
crypt/renewal.
By default no cli.ini file is created (though it may exist already if
you installed Certbot via a package manager, for instance). After cre-
ating one it is possible to specify the location of this configuration
file with certbot --config cli.ini (or shorter -c cli.ini). An example
configuration file is shown below:
# This is an example of the kind of things you can do in a configuration file.
# All flags used by the client can be configured here. Run Certbot with
# "--help" to learn more about the available options.
#
# Note that these options apply automatically to all use of Certbot for
# obtaining or renewing certificates, so options specific to a single
# certificate on a system with several certificates should not be placed
# here.
# Use ECC for the private key
key-type = ecdsa
elliptic-curve = secp384r1
# Use a 4096 bit RSA key instead of 2048
rsa-key-size = 4096
# Uncomment and update to register with the specified e-mail address
# email = foo@example.com
# Uncomment to use the standalone authenticator on port 443
# authenticator = standalone
# Uncomment to use the webroot authenticator. Replace webroot-path with the
# path to the public_html / webroot folder being served by your web server.
# authenticator = webroot
# webroot-path = /usr/share/nginx/html
# Uncomment to automatically agree to the terms of service of the ACME server
# agree-tos = true
# An example of using an alternate ACME server that uses EAB credentials
# server = https://acme.sectigo.com/v2/InCommonRSAOV
# eab-kid = somestringofstuffwithoutquotes
# eab-hmac-key = yaddayaddahexhexnotquoted
By default, the following locations are searched:
• /etc/letsencrypt/cli.ini
• $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/letsencrypt/cli.ini (or ~/.config/letsen-
crypt/cli.ini if $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not set).
Since this configuration file applies to all invocations of certbot it
is incorrect to list domains in it. Listing domains in cli.ini may pre-
vent renewal from working. Additionally due to how arguments in
cli.ini are parsed, options which wish to not be set should not be
listed. Options set to false will instead be read as being set to true
by older versions of Certbot, since they have been listed in the config
file.
Log Rotation
By default certbot stores status logs in /var/log/letsencrypt. By de-
fault certbot will begin rotating logs once there are 1000 logs in the
log directory. Meaning that once 1000 files are in /var/log/letsen-
crypt Certbot will delete the oldest one to make room for new logs. The
number of subsequent logs can be changed by passing the desired number
to the command line flag --max-log-backups. Setting this flag to 0 dis-
ables log rotation entirely, causing certbot to always append to the
same log file.
NOTE:
Some distributions, including Debian and Ubuntu, disable certbot's
internal log rotation in favor of a more traditional logrotate
script. If you are using a distribution's packages and want to al-
ter the log rotation, check /etc/logrotate.d/ for a certbot rotation
script.
Certbot command-line options
Certbot supports a lot of command line options. Here's the full list,
from certbot --help all:
usage:
certbot [SUBCOMMAND] [options] [-d DOMAIN] [-d DOMAIN] ...
Certbot can obtain and install HTTPS/TLS/SSL certificates. By default,
it will attempt to use a webserver both for obtaining and installing the
certificate. The most common SUBCOMMANDS and flags are:
obtain, install, and renew certificates:
(default) run Obtain & install a certificate in your current webserver
certonly Obtain or renew a certificate, but do not install it
renew Renew all previously obtained certificates that are near expiry
enhance Add security enhancements to your existing configuration
-d DOMAINS Comma-separated list of domains to obtain a certificate for
--apache Use the Apache plugin for authentication & installation
--standalone Run a standalone webserver for authentication
--nginx Use the Nginx plugin for authentication & installation
--webroot Place files in a server's webroot folder for authentication
--manual Obtain certificates interactively, or using shell script hooks
-n Run non-interactively
--test-cert Obtain a test certificate from a staging server
--dry-run Test "renew" or "certonly" without saving any certificates to disk
manage certificates:
certificates Display information about certificates you have from Certbot
revoke Revoke a certificate (supply --cert-name or --cert-path)
delete Delete a certificate (supply --cert-name)
manage your account:
register Create an ACME account
unregister Deactivate an ACME account
update_account Update an ACME account
show_account Display account details
--agree-tos Agree to the ACME server's Subscriber Agreement
-m EMAIL Email address for important account notifications
options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-c CONFIG_FILE, --config CONFIG_FILE
path to config file (default: /etc/letsencrypt/cli.ini
and ~/.config/letsencrypt/cli.ini)
-v, --verbose This flag can be used multiple times to incrementally
increase the verbosity of output, e.g. -vvv. (default:
0)
--max-log-backups MAX_LOG_BACKUPS
Specifies the maximum number of backup logs that
should be kept by Certbot's built in log rotation.
Setting this flag to 0 disables log rotation entirely,
causing Certbot to always append to the same log file.
(default: 1000)
-n, --non-interactive, --noninteractive
Run without ever asking for user input. This may
require additional command line flags; the client will
try to explain which ones are required if it finds one
missing (default: False)
--force-interactive Force Certbot to be interactive even if it detects
it's not being run in a terminal. This flag cannot be
used with the renew subcommand. (default: False)
-d DOMAIN, --domains DOMAIN, --domain DOMAIN
Domain names to apply. For multiple domains you can
use multiple -d flags or enter a comma separated list
of domains as a parameter. The first domain provided
will be the subject CN of the certificate, and all
domains will be Subject Alternative Names on the
certificate. The first domain will also be used in
some software user interfaces and as the file paths
for the certificate and related material unless
otherwise specified or you already have a certificate
with the same name. In the case of a name collision it
will append a number like 0001 to the file path name.
(default: Ask)
--eab-kid EAB_KID Key Identifier for External Account Binding (default:
None)
--eab-hmac-key EAB_HMAC_KEY
HMAC key for External Account Binding (default: None)
--cert-name CERTNAME Certificate name to apply. This name is used by
Certbot for housekeeping and in file paths; it doesn't
affect the content of the certificate itself. To see
certificate names, run 'certbot certificates'. When
creating a new certificate, specifies the new
certificate's name. (default: the first provided
domain or the name of an existing certificate on your
system for the same domains)
--dry-run Perform a test run of the client, obtaining test
(invalid) certificates but not saving them to disk.
This can currently only be used with the 'certonly'
and 'renew' subcommands. Note: Although --dry-run
tries to avoid making any persistent changes on a
system, it is not completely side-effect free: if used
with webserver authenticator plugins like apache and
nginx, it makes and then reverts temporary config
changes in order to obtain test certificates, and
reloads webservers to deploy and then roll back those
changes. It also calls --pre-hook and --post-hook
commands if they are defined because they may be
necessary to accurately simulate renewal. --deploy-
hook commands are not called. (default: False)
--debug-challenges After setting up challenges, wait for user input
before submitting to CA. When used in combination with
the `-v` option, the challenge URLs or FQDNs and their
expected return values are shown. (default: False)
--preferred-chain PREFERRED_CHAIN
Set the preferred certificate chain. If the CA offers
multiple certificate chains, prefer the chain whose
topmost certificate was issued from this Subject
Common Name. If no match, the default offered chain
will be used. (default: None)
--preferred-challenges PREF_CHALLS
A sorted, comma delimited list of the preferred
challenge to use during authorization with the most
preferred challenge listed first (Eg, "dns" or
"http,dns"). Not all plugins support all challenges.
See https://certbot.eff.org/docs/using.html#plugins
for details. ACME Challenges are versioned, but if you
pick "http" rather than "http-01", Certbot will select
the latest version automatically. (default: [])
--issuance-timeout ISSUANCE_TIMEOUT
This option specifies how long (in seconds) Certbot
will wait for the server to issue a certificate.
(default: 90)
--user-agent USER_AGENT
Set a custom user agent string for the client. User
agent strings allow the CA to collect high level
statistics about success rates by OS, plugin and use
case, and to know when to deprecate support for past
Python versions and flags. If you wish to hide this
information from the Let's Encrypt server, set this to
"". (default: CertbotACMEClient/2.0.0 (certbot;
OS_NAME OS_VERSION) Authenticator/XXX Installer/YYY
(SUBCOMMAND; flags: FLAGS) Py/major.minor.patchlevel).
The flags encoded in the user agent are: --duplicate,
--force-renew, --allow-subset-of-names, -n, and
whether any hooks are set.
--user-agent-comment USER_AGENT_COMMENT
Add a comment to the default user agent string. May be
used when repackaging Certbot or calling it from
another tool to allow additional statistical data to
be collected. Ignored if --user-agent is set.
(Example: Foo-Wrapper/1.0) (default: None)
automation:
Flags for automating execution & other tweaks
--keep-until-expiring, --keep, --reinstall
If the requested certificate matches an existing
certificate, always keep the existing one until it is
due for renewal (for the 'run' subcommand this means
reinstall the existing certificate). (default: Ask)
--expand If an existing certificate is a strict subset of the
requested names, always expand and replace it with the
additional names. (default: Ask)
--version show program's version number and exit
--force-renewal, --renew-by-default
If a certificate already exists for the requested
domains, renew it now, regardless of whether it is
near expiry. (Often --keep-until-expiring is more
appropriate). Also implies --expand. (default: False)
--renew-with-new-domains
If a certificate already exists for the requested
certificate name but does not match the requested
domains, renew it now, regardless of whether it is
near expiry. (default: False)
--reuse-key When renewing, use the same private key as the
existing certificate. (default: False)
--no-reuse-key When renewing, do not use the same private key as the
existing certificate. Not reusing private keys is the
default behavior of Certbot. This option may be used
to unset --reuse-key on an existing certificate.
(default: False)
--new-key When renewing or replacing a certificate, generate a
new private key, even if --reuse-key is set on the
existing certificate. Combining --new-key and --reuse-
key will result in the private key being replaced and
then reused in future renewals. (default: False)
--allow-subset-of-names
When performing domain validation, do not consider it
a failure if authorizations can not be obtained for a
strict subset of the requested domains. This may be
useful for allowing renewals for multiple domains to
succeed even if some domains no longer point at this
system. This option cannot be used with --csr.
(default: False)
--agree-tos Agree to the ACME Subscriber Agreement (default: Ask)
--duplicate Allow making a certificate lineage that duplicates an
existing one (both can be renewed in parallel)
(default: False)
-q, --quiet Silence all output except errors. Useful for
automation via cron. Implies --non-interactive.
(default: False)
security:
Security parameters & server settings
--rsa-key-size N Size of the RSA key. (default: 2048)
--key-type {rsa,ecdsa}
Type of generated private key. Only *ONE* per
invocation can be provided at this time. (default:
ecdsa)
--elliptic-curve N The SECG elliptic curve name to use. Please see RFC
8446 for supported values. (default: secp256r1)
--must-staple Adds the OCSP Must-Staple extension to the
certificate. Autoconfigures OCSP Stapling for
supported setups (Apache version >= 2.3.3 ). (default:
False)
--redirect Automatically redirect all HTTP traffic to HTTPS for
the newly authenticated vhost. (default: redirect
enabled for install and run, disabled for enhance)
--no-redirect Do not automatically redirect all HTTP traffic to
HTTPS for the newly authenticated vhost. (default:
redirect enabled for install and run, disabled for
enhance)
--hsts Add the Strict-Transport-Security header to every HTTP
response. Forcing browser to always use SSL for the
domain. Defends against SSL Stripping. (default: None)
--uir Add the "Content-Security-Policy: upgrade-insecure-
requests" header to every HTTP response. Forcing the
browser to use https:// for every http:// resource.
(default: None)
--staple-ocsp Enables OCSP Stapling. A valid OCSP response is
stapled to the certificate that the server offers
during TLS. (default: None)
--strict-permissions Require that all configuration files are owned by the
current user; only needed if your config is somewhere
unsafe like /tmp/ (default: False)
--auto-hsts Gradually increasing max-age value for HTTP Strict
Transport Security security header (default: False)
testing:
The following flags are meant for testing and integration purposes only.
--test-cert, --staging
Use the staging server to obtain or revoke test
(invalid) certificates; equivalent to --server
https://acme-staging-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory
(default: False)
--debug Show tracebacks in case of errors (default: False)
--no-verify-ssl Disable verification of the ACME server's certificate.
The root certificates trusted by Certbot can be
overriden by setting the REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE
environment variable. (default: False)
--http-01-port HTTP01_PORT
Port used in the http-01 challenge. This only affects
the port Certbot listens on. A conforming ACME server
will still attempt to connect on port 80. (default:
80)
--http-01-address HTTP01_ADDRESS
The address the server listens to during http-01
challenge. (default: )
--https-port HTTPS_PORT
Port used to serve HTTPS. This affects which port
Nginx will listen on after a LE certificate is
installed. (default: 443)
--break-my-certs Be willing to replace or renew valid certificates with
invalid (testing/staging) certificates (default:
False)
paths:
Flags for changing execution paths & servers
--cert-path CERT_PATH
Path to where certificate is saved (with certonly
--csr), installed from, or revoked (default: None)
--key-path KEY_PATH Path to private key for certificate installation or
revocation (if account key is missing) (default: None)
--fullchain-path FULLCHAIN_PATH
Accompanying path to a full certificate chain
(certificate plus chain). (default: None)
--chain-path CHAIN_PATH
Accompanying path to a certificate chain. (default:
None)
--config-dir CONFIG_DIR
Configuration directory. (default: /etc/letsencrypt)
--work-dir WORK_DIR Working directory. (default: /var/lib/letsencrypt)
--logs-dir LOGS_DIR Logs directory. (default: /var/log/letsencrypt)
--server SERVER ACME Directory Resource URI. (default:
https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory)
manage:
Various subcommands and flags are available for managing your
certificates:
certificates List certificates managed by Certbot
delete Clean up all files related to a certificate
renew Renew all certificates (or one specified with --cert-
name)
revoke Revoke a certificate specified with --cert-path or
--cert-name
update_symlinks Recreate symlinks in your /etc/letsencrypt/live/
directory
run:
Options for obtaining & installing certificates
certonly:
Options for modifying how a certificate is obtained
--csr CSR Path to a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) in DER or
PEM format. Currently --csr only works with the
'certonly' subcommand. (default: None)
renew:
The 'renew' subcommand will attempt to renew any certificates previously
obtained if they are close to expiry, and print a summary of the results.
By default, 'renew' will reuse the plugins and options used to obtain or
most recently renew each certificate. You can test whether future renewals
will succeed with `--dry-run`. Individual certificates can be renewed with
the `--cert-name` option. Hooks are available to run commands before and
after renewal; see https://certbot.eff.org/docs/using.html#renewal for
more information on these.
--pre-hook PRE_HOOK Command to be run in a shell before obtaining any
certificates. Intended primarily for renewal, where it
can be used to temporarily shut down a webserver that
might conflict with the standalone plugin. This will
only be called if a certificate is actually to be
obtained/renewed. When renewing several certificates
that have identical pre-hooks, only the first will be
executed. (default: None)
--post-hook POST_HOOK
Command to be run in a shell after attempting to
obtain/renew certificates. Can be used to deploy
renewed certificates, or to restart any servers that
were stopped by --pre-hook. This is only run if an
attempt was made to obtain/renew a certificate. If
multiple renewed certificates have identical post-
hooks, only one will be run. (default: None)
--deploy-hook DEPLOY_HOOK
Command to be run in a shell once for each
successfully issued certificate. For this command, the
shell variable $RENEWED_LINEAGE will point to the
config live subdirectory (for example,
"/etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com") containing the
new certificates and keys; the shell variable
$RENEWED_DOMAINS will contain a space-delimited list
of renewed certificate domains (for example,
"example.com www.example.com") (default: None)
--disable-hook-validation
Ordinarily the commands specified for --pre-
hook/--post-hook/--deploy-hook will be checked for
validity, to see if the programs being run are in the
$PATH, so that mistakes can be caught early, even when
the hooks aren't being run just yet. The validation is
rather simplistic and fails if you use more advanced
shell constructs, so you can use this switch to
disable it. (default: False)
--no-directory-hooks Disable running executables found in Certbot's hook
directories during renewal. (default: False)
--disable-renew-updates
Disable automatic updates to your server configuration
that would otherwise be done by the selected installer
plugin, and triggered when the user executes "certbot
renew", regardless of if the certificate is renewed.
This setting does not apply to important TLS
configuration updates. (default: False)
--no-autorenew Disable auto renewal of certificates. (default: False)
certificates:
List certificates managed by Certbot
delete:
Options for deleting a certificate
revoke:
Options for revocation of certificates
--reason {unspecified,keycompromise,affiliationchanged,superseded,cessationofoperation}
Specify reason for revoking certificate. (default:
unspecified)
--delete-after-revoke
Delete certificates after revoking them, along with
all previous and later versions of those certificates.
(default: None)
--no-delete-after-revoke
Do not delete certificates after revoking them. This
option should be used with caution because the 'renew'
subcommand will attempt to renew undeleted revoked
certificates. (default: None)
register:
Options for account registration
--register-unsafely-without-email
Specifying this flag enables registering an account
with no email address. This is strongly discouraged,
because you will be unable to receive notice about
impending expiration or revocation of your
certificates or problems with your Certbot
installation that will lead to failure to renew.
(default: False)
-m EMAIL, --email EMAIL
Email used for registration and recovery contact. Use
comma to register multiple emails, ex:
u1@example.com,u2@example.com. (default: Ask).
--eff-email Share your e-mail address with EFF (default: None)
--no-eff-email Don't share your e-mail address with EFF (default:
None)
update_account:
Options for account modification
unregister:
Options for account deactivation.
--account ACCOUNT_ID Account ID to use (default: None)
install:
Options for modifying how a certificate is deployed
rollback:
Options for rolling back server configuration changes
--checkpoints N Revert configuration N number of checkpoints.
(default: 1)
plugins:
Options for the "plugins" subcommand
--init Initialize plugins. (default: False)
--prepare Initialize and prepare plugins. (default: False)
--authenticators Limit to authenticator plugins only. (default: None)
--installers Limit to installer plugins only. (default: None)
update_symlinks:
Recreates certificate and key symlinks in /etc/letsencrypt/live, if you
changed them by hand or edited a renewal configuration file
enhance:
Helps to harden the TLS configuration by adding security enhancements to
already existing configuration.
show_account:
Options useful for the "show_account" subcommand:
plugins:
Plugin Selection: Certbot client supports an extensible plugins
architecture. See 'certbot plugins' for a list of all installed plugins
and their names. You can force a particular plugin by setting options
provided below. Running --help <plugin_name> will list flags specific to
that plugin.
--configurator CONFIGURATOR
Name of the plugin that is both an authenticator and
an installer. Should not be used together with
--authenticator or --installer. (default: Ask)
-a AUTHENTICATOR, --authenticator AUTHENTICATOR
Authenticator plugin name. (default: None)
-i INSTALLER, --installer INSTALLER
Installer plugin name (also used to find domains).
(default: None)
--apache Obtain and install certificates using Apache (default:
False)
--nginx Obtain and install certificates using Nginx (default:
False)
--standalone Obtain certificates using a "standalone" webserver.
(default: False)
--manual Provide laborious manual instructions for obtaining a
certificate (default: False)
--webroot Obtain certificates by placing files in a webroot
directory. (default: False)
--dns-cloudflare Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are
using Cloudflare for DNS). (default: False)
--dns-digitalocean Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are
using DigitalOcean for DNS). (default: False)
--dns-dnsimple Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are
using DNSimple for DNS). (default: False)
--dns-dnsmadeeasy Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are
using DNS Made Easy for DNS). (default: False)
--dns-gehirn Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are
using Gehirn Infrastructure Service for DNS).
(default: False)
--dns-google Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are
using Google Cloud DNS). (default: False)
--dns-linode Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are
using Linode for DNS). (default: False)
--dns-luadns Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are
using LuaDNS for DNS). (default: False)
--dns-nsone Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are
using NS1 for DNS). (default: False)
--dns-ovh Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are
using OVH for DNS). (default: False)
--dns-rfc2136 Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are
using BIND for DNS). (default: False)
--dns-route53 Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are
using Route53 for DNS). (default: False)
--dns-sakuracloud Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are
using Sakura Cloud for DNS). (default: False)
apache:
Apache Web Server plugin (Please note that the default values of the
Apache plugin options change depending on the operating system Certbot is
run on.)
--apache-enmod APACHE_ENMOD
Path to the Apache 'a2enmod' binary (default: None)
--apache-dismod APACHE_DISMOD
Path to the Apache 'a2dismod' binary (default: None)
--apache-le-vhost-ext APACHE_LE_VHOST_EXT
SSL vhost configuration extension (default: -le-
ssl.conf)
--apache-server-root APACHE_SERVER_ROOT
Apache server root directory (default: /etc/apache2)
--apache-vhost-root APACHE_VHOST_ROOT
Apache server VirtualHost configuration root (default:
None)
--apache-logs-root APACHE_LOGS_ROOT
Apache server logs directory (default:
/var/log/apache2)
--apache-challenge-location APACHE_CHALLENGE_LOCATION
Directory path for challenge configuration (default:
/etc/apache2)
--apache-handle-modules APACHE_HANDLE_MODULES
Let installer handle enabling required modules for you
(Only Ubuntu/Debian currently) (default: False)
--apache-handle-sites APACHE_HANDLE_SITES
Let installer handle enabling sites for you (Only
Ubuntu/Debian currently) (default: False)
--apache-ctl APACHE_CTL
Full path to Apache control script (default:
apache2ctl)
--apache-bin APACHE_BIN
Full path to apache2/httpd binary (default: None)
dns-cloudflare:
Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are using Cloudflare
for DNS).
--dns-cloudflare-propagation-seconds DNS_CLOUDFLARE_PROPAGATION_SECONDS
The number of seconds to wait for DNS to propagate
before asking the ACME server to verify the DNS
record. (default: 10)
--dns-cloudflare-credentials DNS_CLOUDFLARE_CREDENTIALS
Cloudflare credentials INI file. (default: None)
dns-digitalocean:
Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are using DigitalOcean
for DNS).
--dns-digitalocean-propagation-seconds DNS_DIGITALOCEAN_PROPAGATION_SECONDS
The number of seconds to wait for DNS to propagate
before asking the ACME server to verify the DNS
record. (default: 10)
--dns-digitalocean-credentials DNS_DIGITALOCEAN_CREDENTIALS
DigitalOcean credentials INI file. (default: None)
dns-dnsimple:
Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are using DNSimple for
DNS).
--dns-dnsimple-propagation-seconds DNS_DNSIMPLE_PROPAGATION_SECONDS
The number of seconds to wait for DNS to propagate
before asking the ACME server to verify the DNS
record. (default: 30)
--dns-dnsimple-credentials DNS_DNSIMPLE_CREDENTIALS
DNSimple credentials INI file. (default: None)
dns-dnsmadeeasy:
Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are using DNS Made Easy
for DNS).
--dns-dnsmadeeasy-propagation-seconds DNS_DNSMADEEASY_PROPAGATION_SECONDS
The number of seconds to wait for DNS to propagate
before asking the ACME server to verify the DNS
record. (default: 60)
--dns-dnsmadeeasy-credentials DNS_DNSMADEEASY_CREDENTIALS
DNS Made Easy credentials INI file. (default: None)
dns-gehirn:
Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are using Gehirn
Infrastructure Service for DNS).
--dns-gehirn-propagation-seconds DNS_GEHIRN_PROPAGATION_SECONDS
The number of seconds to wait for DNS to propagate
before asking the ACME server to verify the DNS
record. (default: 30)
--dns-gehirn-credentials DNS_GEHIRN_CREDENTIALS
Gehirn Infrastructure Service credentials file.
(default: None)
dns-google:
Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are using Google Cloud
DNS for DNS).
--dns-google-propagation-seconds DNS_GOOGLE_PROPAGATION_SECONDS
The number of seconds to wait for DNS to propagate
before asking the ACME server to verify the DNS
record. (default: 60)
--dns-google-credentials DNS_GOOGLE_CREDENTIALS
Path to Google Cloud DNS service account JSON file.
(See https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/
OAuth2ServiceAccount#creatinganaccount forinformation
about creating a service account and
https://cloud.google.com/dns/access-
control#permissions_and_roles for information about
therequired permissions.) (default: None)
dns-linode:
Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are using Linode for
DNS).
--dns-linode-propagation-seconds DNS_LINODE_PROPAGATION_SECONDS
The number of seconds to wait for DNS to propagate
before asking the ACME server to verify the DNS
record. (default: 120)
--dns-linode-credentials DNS_LINODE_CREDENTIALS
Linode credentials INI file. (default: None)
dns-luadns:
Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are using LuaDNS for
DNS).
--dns-luadns-propagation-seconds DNS_LUADNS_PROPAGATION_SECONDS
The number of seconds to wait for DNS to propagate
before asking the ACME server to verify the DNS
record. (default: 30)
--dns-luadns-credentials DNS_LUADNS_CREDENTIALS
LuaDNS credentials INI file. (default: None)
dns-nsone:
Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are using NS1 for DNS).
--dns-nsone-propagation-seconds DNS_NSONE_PROPAGATION_SECONDS
The number of seconds to wait for DNS to propagate
before asking the ACME server to verify the DNS
record. (default: 30)
--dns-nsone-credentials DNS_NSONE_CREDENTIALS
NS1 credentials file. (default: None)
dns-ovh:
Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are using OVH for DNS).
--dns-ovh-propagation-seconds DNS_OVH_PROPAGATION_SECONDS
The number of seconds to wait for DNS to propagate
before asking the ACME server to verify the DNS
record. (default: 120)
--dns-ovh-credentials DNS_OVH_CREDENTIALS
OVH credentials INI file. (default: None)
dns-rfc2136:
Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are using BIND for
DNS).
--dns-rfc2136-propagation-seconds DNS_RFC2136_PROPAGATION_SECONDS
The number of seconds to wait for DNS to propagate
before asking the ACME server to verify the DNS
record. (default: 60)
--dns-rfc2136-credentials DNS_RFC2136_CREDENTIALS
RFC 2136 credentials INI file. (default: None)
dns-route53:
Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are using AWS Route53
for DNS).
--dns-route53-propagation-seconds DNS_ROUTE53_PROPAGATION_SECONDS
The number of seconds to wait for DNS to propagate
before asking the ACME server to verify the DNS
record. (default: 10)
dns-sakuracloud:
Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are using Sakura Cloud
for DNS).
--dns-sakuracloud-propagation-seconds DNS_SAKURACLOUD_PROPAGATION_SECONDS
The number of seconds to wait for DNS to propagate
before asking the ACME server to verify the DNS
record. (default: 90)
--dns-sakuracloud-credentials DNS_SAKURACLOUD_CREDENTIALS
Sakura Cloud credentials file. (default: None)
manual:
Authenticate through manual configuration or custom shell scripts. When
using shell scripts, an authenticator script must be provided. The
environment variables available to this script depend on the type of
challenge. $CERTBOT_DOMAIN will always contain the domain being
authenticated. For HTTP-01 and DNS-01, $CERTBOT_VALIDATION is the
validation string, and $CERTBOT_TOKEN is the filename of the resource
requested when performing an HTTP-01 challenge. An additional cleanup
script can also be provided and can use the additional variable
$CERTBOT_AUTH_OUTPUT which contains the stdout output from the auth
script. For both authenticator and cleanup script, on HTTP-01 and DNS-01
challenges, $CERTBOT_REMAINING_CHALLENGES will be equal to the number of
challenges that remain after the current one, and $CERTBOT_ALL_DOMAINS
contains a comma-separated list of all domains that are challenged for the
current certificate.
--manual-auth-hook MANUAL_AUTH_HOOK
Path or command to execute for the authentication
script (default: None)
--manual-cleanup-hook MANUAL_CLEANUP_HOOK
Path or command to execute for the cleanup script
(default: None)
nginx:
Nginx Web Server plugin
--nginx-server-root NGINX_SERVER_ROOT
Nginx server root directory. (default: /etc/nginx or
/usr/local/etc/nginx)
--nginx-ctl NGINX_CTL
Path to the 'nginx' binary, used for 'configtest' and
retrieving nginx version number. (default: nginx)
--nginx-sleep-seconds NGINX_SLEEP_SECONDS
Number of seconds to wait for nginx configuration
changes to apply when reloading. (default: 1)
null:
Null Installer
standalone:
Spin up a temporary webserver
webroot:
Place files in webroot directory
--webroot-path WEBROOT_PATH, -w WEBROOT_PATH
public_html / webroot path. This can be specified
multiple times to handle different domains; each
domain will have the webroot path that preceded it.
For instance: `-w /var/www/example -d example.com -d
www.example.com -w /var/www/thing -d thing.net -d
m.thing.net` (default: Ask)
--webroot-map WEBROOT_MAP
JSON dictionary mapping domains to webroot paths; this
implies -d for each entry. You may need to escape this
from your shell. E.g.: --webroot-map
'{"eg1.is,m.eg1.is":"/www/eg1/", "eg2.is":"/www/eg2"}'
This option is merged with, but takes precedence over,
-w / -d entries. At present, if you put webroot-map in
a config file, it needs to be on a single line, like:
webroot-map = {"example.com":"/var/www"}. (default:
{})
Getting help
If you're having problems, we recommend posting on the Let's Encrypt
Community Forum.
If you find a bug in the software, please do report it in our issue
tracker. Remember to give us as much information as possible:
• copy and paste exact command line used and the output (though mind
that the latter might include some personally identifiable informa-
tion, including your email and domains)
• copy and paste logs from /var/log/letsencrypt (though mind they also
might contain personally identifiable information)
• copy and paste certbot --version output
• your operating system, including specific version
• specify which installation method you've chosen
DEVELOPER GUIDE
Table of Contents
• Getting Started
• Running a local copy of the client
• Find issues to work on
• Testing
• Running automated unit tests
• Running automated integration tests
• Running manual integration tests
• Running tests in CI
• Code components and layout
• Plugin-architecture
• Authenticators
• Installer
• Installer Development
• Writing your own plugin
• Writing your own plugin snap
• Coding style
• Use certbot.compat.os instead of os
• Mypy type annotations
• Submitting a pull request
• Asking for help
• Building the Certbot and DNS plugin snaps
• Updating the documentation
• Certbot's dependencies
• Updating dependency versions
• Running the client with Docker
Getting Started
Certbot has the same system requirements when set up for development.
While the section below will help you install Certbot and its dependen-
cies, Certbot needs to be run on a UNIX-like OS so if you're using Win-
dows, you'll need to set up a (virtual) machine running an OS such as
Linux and continue with these instructions on that UNIX-like OS.
Running a local copy of the client
Running the client in developer mode from your local tree is a little
different than running Certbot as a user. To get set up, clone our git
repository by running:
git clone https://github.com/certbot/certbot
If you're running on a UNIX-like OS, you can run the following commands
to install dependencies and set up a virtual environment where you can
run Certbot.
Install and configure the OS system dependencies required to run Cert-
bot.
# For APT-based distributions (e.g. Debian, Ubuntu ...)
sudo apt update
sudo apt install python3-dev python3-venv gcc libaugeas0 libssl-dev \
libffi-dev ca-certificates openssl
# For RPM-based distributions (e.g. Fedora, CentOS ...)
# NB1: old distributions will use yum instead of dnf
# NB2: RHEL-based distributions use python3X-devel instead of python3-devel (e.g. python36-devel)
sudo dnf install python3-devel gcc augeas-libs openssl-devel libffi-devel \
redhat-rpm-config ca-certificates openssl
# For macOS installations with Homebrew already installed and configured
# NB: If you also run `brew install python` you don't need the ~/lib
# directory created below, however, Certbot's Apache plugin won't work
# if you use Python installed from other sources such as pyenv or the
# version provided by Apple.
brew install augeas
mkdir ~/lib
ln -s $(brew --prefix)/lib/libaugeas* ~/lib
Set up the Python virtual environment that will host your Certbot local
instance.
cd certbot
python tools/venv.py
NOTE:
You may need to repeat this when Certbot's dependencies change or
when a new plugin is introduced.
You can now run the copy of Certbot from git either by executing
venv/bin/certbot, or by activating the virtual environment. You can do
the latter by running:
source venv/bin/activate
After running this command, certbot and development tools like ipdb3,
ipython, pytest, and tox are available in the shell where you ran the
command. These tools are installed in the virtual environment and are
kept separate from your global Python installation. This works by set-
ting environment variables so the right executables are found and
Python can pull in the versions of various packages needed by Certbot.
More information can be found in the virtualenv docs.
Find issues to work on
You can find the open issues in the github issue tracker. Compara-
tively easy ones are marked good first issue. If you're starting work
on something, post a comment to let others know and seek feedback on
your plan where appropriate.
Once you've got a working branch, you can open a pull request. All
changes in your pull request must have thorough unit test coverage,
pass our tests, and be compliant with the coding style.
Testing
You can test your code in several ways:
• running the automated unit tests,
• running the automated integration tests
• running an ad hoc manual integration test
NOTE:
Running integration tests does not currently work on macOS. See
https://github.com/certbot/certbot/issues/6959. In the meantime, we
recommend developers on macOS open a PR to run integration tests.
Running automated unit tests
When you are working in a file foo.py, there should also be a file
foo_test.py either in the same directory as foo.py or in the tests sub-
directory (if there isn't, make one). While you are working on your
code and tests, run python foo_test.py to run the relevant tests.
For debugging, we recommend putting import ipdb; ipdb.set_trace()
statements inside the source code.
Once you are done with your code changes, and the tests in foo_test.py
pass, run all of the unit tests for Certbot and check for coverage with
tox -e py3-cover. You should then check for code style with tox -e lint
(all files) or pylint --rcfile=.pylintrc path/to/file.py (single file
at a time).
Once all of the above is successful, you may run the full test suite
using tox --skip-missing-interpreters. We recommend running the com-
mands above first, because running all tests like this is very slow,
and the large amount of output can make it hard to find specific fail-
ures when they happen.
WARNING:
The full test suite may attempt to modify your system's Apache con-
fig if your user has sudo permissions, so it should not be run on a
production Apache server.
Running automated integration tests
Generally it is sufficient to open a pull request and let Github and
Azure Pipelines run integration tests for you. However, you may want to
run them locally before submitting your pull request. You need Docker
and docker-compose installed and working.
The tox environment integration will setup Pebble, the Let's Encrypt
ACME CA server for integration testing, then launch the Certbot inte-
gration tests.
With a user allowed to access your local Docker daemon, run:
tox -e integration
Tests will be run using pytest. A test report and a code coverage re-
port will be displayed at the end of the integration tests execution.
Running manual integration tests
You can also manually execute Certbot against a local instance of the
Pebble ACME server. This is useful to verify that the modifications
done to the code makes Certbot behave as expected.
To do so you need:
• Docker installed, and a user with access to the Docker client,
• an available local copy of Certbot.
The virtual environment set up with python tools/venv.py contains two
CLI tools that can be used once the virtual environment is activated:
run_acme_server
• Starts a local instance of Pebble and runs in the foreground printing
its logs.
• Press CTRL+C to stop this instance.
• This instance is configured to validate challenges against certbot
executed locally.
NOTE:
Some options are available to tweak the local ACME server. You can
execute run_acme_server --help to see the inline help of the
run_acme_server tool.
certbot_test [ARGS...]
• Execute certbot with the provided arguments and other arguments use-
ful for testing purposes, such as: verbose output, full tracebacks in
case Certbot crashes, etc.
• Execution is preconfigured to interact with the Pebble CA started
with run_acme_server.
• Any arguments can be passed as they would be to Certbot (eg. cert-
bot_test certonly -d test.example.com).
Here is a typical workflow to verify that Certbot successfully issued a
certificate using an HTTP-01 challenge on a machine with Python 3:
python tools/venv.py
source venv/bin/activate
run_acme_server &
certbot_test certonly --standalone -d test.example.com
# To stop Pebble, launch `fg` to get back the background job, then press CTRL+C
Running tests in CI
Certbot uses Azure Pipelines to run continuous integration tests. If
you are using our Azure setup, a branch whose name starts with test-
will run all tests on that branch.
Code components and layout
The following components of the Certbot repository are distributed to
users:
acme contains all protocol specific code
certbot
main client code
certbot-apache and certbot-nginx
client code to configure specific web servers
certbot-dns-*
client code to configure DNS providers
windows installer
Installs Certbot on Windows and is built using the files in win-
dows-installer/
Plugin-architecture
Certbot has a plugin architecture to facilitate support for different
webservers, other TLS servers, and operating systems. The interfaces
available for plugins to implement are defined in interfaces.py and
plugins/common.py.
The main two plugin interfaces are Authenticator, which implements var-
ious ways of proving domain control to a certificate authority, and
Installer, which configures a server to use a certificate once it is
issued. Some plugins, like the built-in Apache and Nginx plugins, im-
plement both interfaces and perform both tasks. Others, like the
built-in Standalone authenticator, implement just one interface.
Authenticators
Authenticators are plugins that prove control of a domain name by solv-
ing a challenge provided by the ACME server. ACME currently defines
several types of challenges: HTTP, TLS-ALPN, and DNS, represented by
classes in acme.challenges. An authenticator plugin should implement
support for at least one challenge type.
An Authenticator indicates which challenges it supports by implementing
get_chall_pref(domain) to return a sorted list of challenge types in
preference order.
An Authenticator must also implement perform(achalls), which "performs"
a list of challenges by, for instance, provisioning a file on an HTTP
server, or setting a TXT record in DNS. Once all challenges have suc-
ceeded or failed, Certbot will call the plugin's cleanup(achalls)
method to remove any files or DNS records that were needed only during
authentication.
Installer
Installers plugins exist to actually setup the certificate in a server,
possibly tweak the security configuration to make it more correct and
secure (Fix some mixed content problems, turn on HSTS, redirect to
HTTPS, etc). Installer plugins tell the main client about their abili-
ties to do the latter via the supported_enhancements() call. We cur-
rently have two Installers in the tree, the ApacheConfigurator. and the
NginxConfigurator. External projects have made some progress toward
support for IIS, Icecast and Plesk.
Installers and Authenticators will oftentimes be the same class/object
(because for instance both tasks can be performed by a webserver like
nginx) though this is not always the case (the standalone plugin is an
authenticator that listens on port 80, but it cannot install certifi-
cates; a postfix plugin would be an installer but not an authentica-
tor).
Installers and Authenticators are kept separate because it should be
possible to use the StandaloneAuthenticator (it sets up its own Python
server to perform challenges) with a program that cannot solve chal-
lenges itself (Such as MTA installers).
Installer Development
There are a few existing classes that may be beneficial while develop-
ing a new Installer. Installers aimed to reconfigure UNIX servers may
use Augeas for configuration parsing and can inherit from AugeasConfig-
urator class to handle much of the interface. Installers that are un-
able to use Augeas may still find the Reverter class helpful in han-
dling configuration checkpoints and rollback.
Writing your own plugin
NOTE:
The Certbot team is not currently accepting any new plugins because
we want to rethink our approach to the challenge and resolve some
issues like #6464, #6503, and #6504 first.
In the meantime, you're welcome to release it as a third-party
plugin. See certbot-dns-ispconfig for one example of that.
Certbot client supports dynamic discovery of plugins through the
setuptools entry points using the certbot.plugins group. This way you
can, for example, create a custom implementation of Authenticator or
the Installer without having to merge it with the core upstream source
code. An example is provided in examples/plugins/ directory.
While developing, you can install your plugin into a Certbot develop-
ment virtualenv like this:
. venv/bin/activate
pip install -e examples/plugins/
certbot_test plugins
Your plugin should show up in the output of the last command. If not,
it was not installed properly.
Once you've finished your plugin and published it, you can have your
users install it system-wide with pip install. Note that this will only
work for users who have Certbot installed from OS packages or via pip.
Writing your own plugin snap
If you'd like your plugin to be used alongside the Certbot snap, you
will also have to publish your plugin as a snap. Plugin snaps are regu-
lar confined snaps, but normally do not provide any "apps" themselves.
Plugin snaps export loadable Python modules to the Certbot snap.
When the Certbot snap runs, it will use its version of Python and pre-
fer Python modules contained in its own snap over modules contained in
external snaps. This means that your snap doesn't have to contain
things like an extra copy of Python, Certbot, or their dependencies,
but also that if you need a different version of a dependency than is
already installed in the Certbot snap, the Certbot snap will have to be
updated.
Certbot plugin snaps expose their Python modules to the Certbot snap
via a snap content interface where certbot-1 is the value for the con-
tent attribute. The Certbot snap only uses this to find the names of
connected plugin snaps and it expects to find the Python modules to be
loaded under lib/python3.8/site-packages/ in the plugin snap. This lo-
cation is the default when using the core20 base snap and the python
snapcraft plugin.
The Certbot snap also provides a separate content interface which you
can use to get metadata about the Certbot snap using the content iden-
tifier metadata-1.
The script used to generate the snapcraft.yaml files for our own exter-
nally snapped plugins can be found at
https://github.com/certbot/certbot/blob/master/tools/snap/generate_dnsplugins_snapcraft.sh.
For more information on building externally snapped plugins, see the
section on Building the Certbot and DNS plugin snaps.
Once you have created your own snap, if you have the snap file locally,
it can be installed for use with Certbot by running:
snap install --classic certbot
snap set certbot trust-plugin-with-root=ok
snap install --dangerous your-snap-filename.snap
sudo snap connect certbot:plugin your-snap-name
sudo /snap/bin/certbot plugins
If everything worked, the last command should list your plugin in the
list of plugins found by Certbot. Once your snap is published to the
snap store, it will be installable through the name of the snap on the
snap store without the --dangerous flag. If you are also using Cert-
bot's metadata interface, you can run sudo snap connect
your-snap-name:your-plug-name-for-metadata certbot:certbot-metadata to
connect your snap to it.
Coding style
Please:
1. Be consistent with the rest of the code.
2. Read PEP 8 - Style Guide for Python Code.
3. Follow the Google Python Style Guide, with the exception that we use
Sphinx-style documentation:
def foo(arg):
"""Short description.
:param int arg: Some number.
:returns: Argument
:rtype: int
"""
return arg
4. Remember to use pylint.
5. You may consider installing a plugin for editorconfig in your editor
to prevent some linting warnings.
6. Please avoid unittest.assertTrue or unittest.assertFalse when possi-
ble, and use assertEqual or more specific assert. They give better
messages when it's failing, and are generally more correct.
Use certbot.compat.os instead of os
Python's standard library os module lacks full support for several Win-
dows security features about file permissions (eg. DACLs). However sev-
eral files handled by Certbot (eg. private keys) need strongly re-
stricted access on both Linux and Windows.
To help with this, the certbot.compat.os module wraps the standard os
module, and forbids usage of methods that lack support for these Win-
dows security features.
As a developer, when working on Certbot or its plugins, you must use
certbot.compat.os in every place you would need os (eg. from cert-
bot.compat import os instead of import os). Otherwise the tests will
fail when your PR is submitted.
Mypy type annotations
Certbot uses the mypy static type checker. Python 3 natively supports
official type annotations, which can then be tested for consistency us-
ing mypy. Mypy does some type checks even without type annotations; we
can find bugs in Certbot even without a fully annotated codebase.
Zulip wrote a great guide to using mypy. It’s useful, but you don’t
have to read the whole thing to start contributing to Certbot.
To run mypy on Certbot, use tox -e mypy on a machine that has Python 3
installed.
Also note that OpenSSL, which we rely on, has type definitions for
crypto but not SSL. We use both. Those imports should look like this:
from OpenSSL import crypto
from OpenSSL import SSL
Submitting a pull request
Steps:
0. We recommend you talk with us in a GitHub issue or Mattermost be-
fore writing a pull request to ensure the changes you're making is
something we have the time and interest to review.
1. Write your code! When doing this, you should add mypy type annota-
tions for any functions you add or modify. You can check that
you've done this correctly by running tox -e mypy on a machine that
has Python 3 installed.
2. Make sure your environment is set up properly and that you're in
your virtualenv. You can do this by following the instructions in
the Getting Started section.
3. Run tox -e lint to check for pylint errors. Fix any errors.
4. Run tox --skip-missing-interpreters to run the entire test suite
including coverage. The --skip-missing-interpreters argument ig-
nores missing versions of Python needed for running the tests. Fix
any errors.
5. If any documentation should be added or updated as part of the
changes you have made, please include the documentation changes in
your PR.
6. Submit the PR. Once your PR is open, please do not force push to
the branch containing your pull request to squash or amend commits.
We use squash merges on PRs and rewriting commits makes changes
harder to track between reviews.
7. Did your tests pass on Azure Pipelines? If they didn't, fix any er-
rors.
Asking for help
If you have any questions while working on a Certbot issue, don't hesi-
tate to ask for help! You can do this in the Certbot channel in EFF's
Mattermost instance for its open source projects as described below.
You can get involved with several of EFF's software projects such as
Certbot at the EFF Open Source Contributor Chat Platform. By signing
up for the EFF Open Source Contributor Chat Platform, you consent to
share your personal information with the Electronic Frontier Founda-
tion, which is the operator and data controller for this platform. The
channels will be available both to EFF, and to other users of EFFOSCCP,
who may use or disclose information in these channels outside of EFFOS-
CCP. EFF will use your information, according to the Privacy Policy, to
further the mission of EFF, including hosting and moderating the dis-
cussions on this platform.
Use of EFFOSCCP is subject to the EFF Code of Conduct. When investigat-
ing an alleged Code of Conduct violation, EFF may review discussion
channels or direct messages.
Building the Certbot and DNS plugin snaps
Instructions for how to manually build and run the Certbot snap and the
externally snapped DNS plugins that the Certbot project supplies are
located in the README file at
https://github.com/certbot/certbot/tree/master/tools/snap.
Updating the documentation
Many of the packages in the Certbot repository have documentation in a
docs/ directory. This directory is located under the top level direc-
tory for the package. For instance, Certbot's documentation is under
certbot/docs.
To build the documentation of a package, make sure you have followed
the instructions to set up a local copy of Certbot including activating
the virtual environment. After that, cd to the docs directory you want
to build and run the command:
make clean html
This would generate the HTML documentation in _build/html in your cur-
rent docs/ directory.
Certbot's dependencies
We attempt to pin all of Certbot's dependencies whenever we can for re-
liability and consistency. Some of the places we have Certbot's depen-
dencies pinned include our snaps, Docker images, Windows installer, CI,
and our development environments.
In most cases, the file where dependency versions are specified is
tools/requirements.txt. There are two exceptions to this. The first is
our "oldest" tests where tools/oldest_constraints.txt is used instead.
The purpose of the "oldest" tests is to ensure Certbot continues to
work with the oldest versions of our dependencies which we claim to
support. The oldest versions of the dependencies we support should also
be declared in our setup.py files to communicate this information to
our users.
The second exception to using tools/requirements.txt is in our unpinned
tests. As of writing this, there is one test we run nightly in CI where
we leave Certbot's dependencies unpinned. The thinking behind this test
is to help us learn about breaking changes in our dependencies so that
we can respond accordingly.
The choices of whether Certbot's dependencies are pinned and what file
is used if they are should be automatically handled for you most of the
time by Certbot's tooling. The way it works though is tools/pip_in-
stall.py (which many of our other tools build on) checks for the pres-
ence of environment variables. If CERTBOT_NO_PIN is set to 1, Certbot's
dependencies will not be pinned. If that variable is not set and CERT-
BOT_OLDEST is set to 1, tools/oldest_constraints.txt will be used as
constraints for pip. Otherwise, tools/requirements.txt is used as con-
straints.
Updating dependency versions
tools/requirements.txt and tools/oldest_constraints.txt can be updated
using tools/pinning/current/repin.sh and tools/pinning/oldest/repin.sh
respectively. This works by using poetry to generate pinnings based on
a Poetry project defined by the pyproject.toml file in the same direc-
tory as the script. In many cases, you can just run the script to gen-
erate updated dependencies, however, if you need to pin back packages
or unpin packages that were previously restricted to an older version,
you will need to modify the pyproject.toml file. The syntax used by
this file is described at https://python-poetry.org/docs/pyproject/ and
how dependencies are specified in this file is further described at
https://python-poetry.org/docs/dependency-specification/.
If you want to learn more about the design used here, see tools/pin-
ning/DESIGN.md in the Certbot repo.
Running the client with Docker
You can use Docker Compose to quickly set up an environment for running
and testing Certbot. To install Docker Compose, follow the instructions
at https://docs.docker.com/compose/install/.
NOTE:
Linux users can simply run pip install docker-compose to get Docker
Compose after installing Docker Engine and activating your shell as
described in the Getting Started section.
Now you can develop on your host machine, but run Certbot and test your
changes in Docker. When using docker-compose make sure you are inside
your clone of the Certbot repository. As an example, you can run the
following command to check for linting errors:
docker-compose run --rm --service-ports development bash -c 'tox -e lint'
You can also leave a terminal open running a shell in the Docker con-
tainer and modify Certbot code in another window. The Certbot repo on
your host machine is mounted inside of the container so any changes you
make immediately take effect. To do this, run:
docker-compose run --rm --service-ports development bash
Now running the check for linting errors described above is as easy as:
tox -e lint
PACKAGING GUIDE
Releases
We release packages and upload them to PyPI (wheels and source tar-
balls).
• https://pypi.python.org/pypi/acme
• https://pypi.python.org/pypi/certbot
• https://pypi.python.org/pypi/certbot-apache
• https://pypi.python.org/pypi/certbot-nginx
• https://pypi.python.org/pypi/certbot-dns-cloudflare
• https://pypi.python.org/pypi/certbot-dns-digitalocean
• https://pypi.python.org/pypi/certbot-dns-dnsimple
• https://pypi.python.org/pypi/certbot-dns-dnsmadeeasy
• https://pypi.python.org/pypi/certbot-dns-google
• https://pypi.python.org/pypi/certbot-dns-linode
• https://pypi.python.org/pypi/certbot-dns-luadns
• https://pypi.python.org/pypi/certbot-dns-nsone
• https://pypi.python.org/pypi/certbot-dns-ovh
• https://pypi.python.org/pypi/certbot-dns-rfc2136
• https://pypi.python.org/pypi/certbot-dns-route53
The following scripts are used in the process:
• https://github.com/certbot/certbot/blob/master/tools/release.sh
We use git tags to identify releases, using Semantic Versioning. For
example: v0.11.1.
Since version 1.21.0, our packages are cryptographically signed by one
of four PGP keys:
• BF6BCFC89E90747B9A680FD7B6029E8500F7DB16
• 86379B4F0AF371B50CD9E5FF3402831161D1D280
• 20F201346BF8F3F455A73F9A780CC99432A28621
• F2871B4152AE13C49519111F447BF683AA3B26C3`
These keys can be found on major key servers and at
https://dl.eff.org/certbot.pub.
Releases before 1.21.0 were signed by the PGP key
A2CFB51FA275A7286234E7B24D17C995CD9775F2 which can still be found on
major key servers.
Notes for package maintainers
0. Please use our tagged releases, not master!
1. Do not package certbot-compatibility-test as it's only used inter-
nally.
2. To run tests on our packages, you should use pytest by running the
command python -m pytest. Running pytest directly may not work be-
cause PYTHONPATH is not handled the same way and local modules may
not be found by the test runner.
3. If you'd like to include automated renewal in your package:
• certbot renew -q should be added to crontab or systemd timer.
• A random per-machine time offset should be included to avoid hav-
ing a large number of your clients hit Let's Encrypt's servers si-
multaneously.
• --preconfigured-renewal should be included on the CLI or in
cli.ini for all invocations of Certbot, so that it can adjust its
interactive output regarding automated renewal (Certbot >= 1.9.0).
4. jws is an internal script for acme module and it doesn't have to be
packaged - it's mostly for debugging: you can use it as echo foo |
jws sign | jws verify.
5. Do get in touch with us. We are happy to make any changes that will
make packaging easier. If you need to apply some patches don't do it
downstream - make a PR here.
BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY
All Certbot components including acme, Certbot, and non-third party
plugins follow Semantic Versioning both for its Python API and for the
application itself. This means that we will not change behavior in a
backwards incompatible way except in a new major version of the
project.
NOTE:
None of this applies to the behavior of Certbot distribution mecha-
nisms such as our snaps or OS packages whose behavior may change at
any time. Semantic versioning only applies to the common Certbot
components that are installed by various distribution methods.
For Certbot as an application, the command line interface and non-in-
teractive behavior can be considered stable with two exceptions. The
first is that no aspects of Certbot's console or log output should be
considered stable and it may change at any time. The second is that
Certbot's behavior should only be considered stable with certain files
but not all. Files with which users should expect Certbot to maintain
its current behavior with are:
• /etc/letsencrypt/live/$domain/{cert,chain,fullchain,privkey}.pem,
where $domain is the certificate name (see Where are my certificates?
for more details)
• CLI configuration files
• Hook directories in /etc/letsencrypt/renewal-hooks
Certbot's behavior with other files may change at any point.
Another area where Certbot should not be considered stable is its be-
havior when not run in non-interactive mode which also may change at
any point.
In general, if we're making a change that we expect will break some
users, we will bump the major version and will have warned about it in
a prior release when possible. For our Python API, we will issue warn-
ings using Python's warning module. For application level changes, we
will print and log warning messages.
RESOURCES
Documentation: https://certbot.eff.org/docs
Software project: https://github.com/certbot/certbot
Notes for developers: https://certbot.eff.org/docs/contributing.html
Main Website: https://certbot.eff.org
Let's Encrypt Website: https://letsencrypt.org
Community: https://community.letsencrypt.org
ACME spec: RFC 8555
ACME working area in github (archived):
https://github.com/ietf-wg-acme/acme
API DOCUMENTATION
certbot package
Certbot client.
Subpackages
certbot.compat package
Compatibility layer to run certbot both on Linux and Windows.
This package contains all logic that needs to be implemented specifi-
cally for Linux and for Windows. Then the rest of certbot code relies
on this module to be platform agnostic.
Submodules
certbot.compat.filesystem module
Compat module to handle files security on Windows and Linux
certbot.compat.filesystem.chmod(file_path: str, mode: int) -> None
Apply a POSIX mode on given file_path:
• for Linux, the POSIX mode will be directly applied using
chmod,
• for Windows, the POSIX mode will be translated into a Win-
dows DACL that make sense for Certbot context, and applied
to the file using kernel calls.
The definition of the Windows DACL that correspond to a POSIX
mode, in the context of Certbot, is explained at
https://github.com/certbot/certbot/issues/6356 and is imple-
mented by the method _generate_windows_flags().
Parameters
• file_path (str) -- Path of the file
• mode (int) -- POSIX mode to apply
certbot.compat.filesystem.umask(mask: int) -> int
Set the current numeric umask and return the previous umask. On
Linux, the built-in umask method is used. On Windows, our Cert-
bot-side implementation is used.
Parameters
mask (int) -- The user file-creation mode mask to apply.
Return type
int
Returns
The previous umask value.
certbot.compat.filesystem.temp_umask(mask: int) -> Generator[None,
None, None]
Apply a umask temporarily, meant to be used in a with block.
Uses the Certbot implementation of umask.
Parameters
mask (int) -- The user file-creation mode mask to apply
temporarily
certbot.compat.filesystem.copy_ownership_and_apply_mode(src: str, dst:
str, mode: int, copy_user: bool, copy_group: bool) -> None
Copy ownership (user and optionally group on Linux) from the
source to the destination, then apply given mode in compatible
way for Linux and Windows. This replaces the os.chown command.
Parameters
• src (str) -- Path of the source file
• dst (str) -- Path of the destination file
• mode (int) -- Permission mode to apply on the destina-
tion file
• copy_user (bool) -- Copy user if True
• copy_group (bool) -- Copy group if True on Linux (has
no effect on Windows)
certbot.compat.filesystem.copy_ownership_and_mode(src: str, dst: str,
copy_user: bool = True, copy_group: bool = True) -> None
Copy ownership (user and optionally group on Linux) and
mode/DACL from the source to the destination.
Parameters
• src (str) -- Path of the source file
• dst (str) -- Path of the destination file
• copy_user (bool) -- Copy user if True
• copy_group (bool) -- Copy group if True on Linux (has
no effect on Windows)
certbot.compat.filesystem.check_mode(file_path: str, mode: int) -> bool
Check if the given mode matches the permissions of the given
file. On Linux, will make a direct comparison, on Windows, mode
will be compared against the security model.
Parameters
• file_path (str) -- Path of the file
• mode (int) -- POSIX mode to test
Return type
bool
Returns
True if the POSIX mode matches the file permissions
certbot.compat.filesystem.check_owner(file_path: str) -> bool
Check if given file is owned by current user.
Parameters
file_path (str) -- File path to check
Return type
bool
Returns
True if given file is owned by current user, False other-
wise.
certbot.compat.filesystem.check_permissions(file_path: str, mode: int)
-> bool
Check if given file has the given mode and is owned by current
user.
Parameters
• file_path (str) -- File path to check
• mode (int) -- POSIX mode to check
Return type
bool
Returns
True if file has correct mode and owner, False otherwise.
certbot.compat.filesystem.open(file_path: str, flags: int, mode: int =
511) -> int
Wrapper of original os.open function, that will ensure on Win-
dows that given mode is correctly applied.
Parameters
• file_path (str) -- The file path to open
• flags (int) -- Flags to apply on file while opened
• mode (int) -- POSIX mode to apply on file when opened,
Python defaults will be applied if None
Returns
the file descriptor to the opened file
Return type
int
Raise OSError(errno.EEXIST) if the file already exists and
os.O_CREAT & os.O_EXCL are set, OSError(errno.EACCES) on
Windows if the file already exists and is a directory,
and os.O_CREAT is set.
certbot.compat.filesystem.makedirs(file_path: str, mode: int = 511) ->
None
Rewrite of original os.makedirs function, that will ensure on
Windows that given mode is correctly applied.
Parameters
• file_path (str) -- The file path to open
• mode (int) -- POSIX mode to apply on leaf directory
when created, Python defaults will be applied if None
certbot.compat.filesystem.mkdir(file_path: str, mode: int = 511) ->
None
Rewrite of original os.mkdir function, that will ensure on Win-
dows that given mode is correctly applied.
Parameters
• file_path (str) -- The file path to open
• mode (int) -- POSIX mode to apply on directory when
created, Python defaults will be applied if None
certbot.compat.filesystem.replace(src: str, dst: str) -> None
Rename a file to a destination path and handles situations where
the destination exists.
Parameters
• src (str) -- The current file path.
• dst (str) -- The new file path.
certbot.compat.filesystem.realpath(file_path: str) -> str
Find the real path for the given path. This method resolves sym-
links, including recursive symlinks, and is protected against
symlinks that creates an infinite loop.
Parameters
file_path (str) -- The path to resolve
Returns
The real path for the given path
Return type
str
certbot.compat.filesystem.readlink(link_path: str) -> str
Return a string representing the path to which the symbolic link
points.
Parameters
link_path (str) -- The symlink path to resolve
Returns
The path the symlink points to
Returns
str
Raise ValueError if a long path (260> characters) is encoun-
tered on Windows
certbot.compat.filesystem.is_executable(path: str) -> bool
Is path an executable file?
Parameters
path (str) -- path to test
Returns
True if path is an executable file
Return type
bool
certbot.compat.filesystem.has_world_permissions(path: str) -> bool
Check if everybody/world has any right (read/write/execute) on a
file given its path.
Parameters
path (str) -- path to test
Returns
True if everybody/world has any right to the file
Return type
bool
certbot.compat.filesystem.compute_private_key_mode(old_key: str,
base_mode: int) -> int
Calculate the POSIX mode to apply to a private key given the
previous private key.
Parameters
• old_key (str) -- path to the previous private key
• base_mode (int) -- the minimum modes to apply to a pri-
vate key
Returns
the POSIX mode to apply
Return type
int
certbot.compat.filesystem.has_same_ownership(path1: str, path2: str) ->
bool
Return True if the ownership of two files given their respective
path is the same. On Windows, ownership is checked against
owner only, since files do not have a group owner.
Parameters
• path1 (str) -- path to the first file
• path2 (str) -- path to the second file
Returns
True if both files have the same ownership, False other-
wise
Return type
bool
certbot.compat.filesystem.has_min_permissions(path: str, min_mode: int)
-> bool
Check if a file given its path has at least the permissions de-
fined by the given minimal mode. On Windows, group permissions
are ignored since files do not have a group owner.
Parameters
• path (str) -- path to the file to check
• min_mode (int) -- the minimal permissions expected
Returns
True if the file matches the minimal permissions expecta-
tions, False otherwise
Return type
bool
certbot.compat.misc module
This compat module handles various platform specific calls that do not
fall into one particular category.
certbot.compat.misc.raise_for_non_administrative_windows_rights() ->
None
On Windows, raise if current shell does not have the administra-
tive rights. Do nothing on Linux.
Raises .errors.Error -- If the current shell does not have ad-
ministrative rights on Windows.
certbot.compat.misc.prepare_virtual_console() -> None
On Windows, ensure that Console Virtual Terminal Sequences are
enabled.
certbot.compat.misc.readline_with_timeout(timeout: float, prompt: Op-
tional[str]) -> str
Read user input to return the first line entered, or raise after
specified timeout.
Parameters
• timeout (float) -- The timeout in seconds given to the
user.
• prompt (str) -- The prompt message to display to the
user.
Returns
The first line entered by the user.
Return type
str
certbot.compat.misc.get_default_folder(folder_type: str) -> str
Return the relevant default folder for the current OS
Parameters
folder_type (str) -- The type of folder to retrieve (con-
fig, work or logs)
Returns
The relevant default folder.
Return type
str
certbot.compat.misc.underscores_for_unsupported_charac-
ters_in_path(path: str) -> str
Replace unsupported characters in path for current OS by under-
scores. :param str path: the path to normalize :return: the
normalized path :rtype: str
certbot.compat.misc.execute_command_status(cmd_name: str, shell_cmd:
str, env: Optional[dict] = None) -> Tuple[int, str, str]
Run a command:
• on Linux command will be run by the standard shell se-
lected with subprocess.run(shell=True)
• on Windows command will be run in a Powershell shell
This function returns the exit code, and does not log the result
and output of the command.
Parameters
• cmd_name (str) -- the user facing name of the hook be-
ing run
• shell_cmd (str) -- shell command to execute
• env (dict) -- environ to pass into subprocess.run
Returns
tuple (int returncode, str stderr, str stdout)
certbot.compat.os module
This compat modules is a wrapper of the core os module that forbids us-
age of specific operations (e.g. chown, chmod, getuid) that would be
harmful to the Windows file security model of Certbot. This module is
intended to replace standard os module throughout certbot projects (ex-
cept acme).
This module has the same API as the os module in the Python standard
library except for the functions defined below.
isort:skip_file
certbot.compat.os.access(*unused_args, **unused_kwargs)
Method os.access() is forbidden
certbot.compat.os.chmod(*unused_args, **unused_kwargs)
Method os.chmod() is forbidden
certbot.compat.os.chown(*unused_args, **unused_kwargs)
Method os.chown() is forbidden
certbot.compat.os.fstat(*unused_args, **unused_kwargs)
Method os.stat() is forbidden
certbot.compat.os.mkdir(*unused_args, **unused_kwargs)
Method os.mkdir() is forbidden
certbot.compat.os.open(*unused_args, **unused_kwargs)
Method os.open() is forbidden
certbot.compat.os.rename(*unused_args, **unused_kwargs)
Method os.rename() is forbidden
certbot.compat.os.replace(*unused_args, **unused_kwargs)
Method os.replace() is forbidden
certbot.compat.os.stat(*unused_args, **unused_kwargs)
Method os.stat() is forbidden
certbot.compat.os.umask(*unused_args, **unused_kwargs)
Method os.chmod() is forbidden
certbot.compat.os.makedirs(*unused_args, **unused_kwargs)
Method os.makedirs() is forbidden
certbot.display package
Certbot display utilities.
Submodules
certbot.display.ops module
Contains UI methods for LE user operations.
certbot.display.ops.get_email(invalid: bool = False, optional: bool =
True) -> str
Prompt for valid email address.
Parameters
• invalid (bool) -- True if an invalid address was pro-
vided by the user
• optional (bool) -- True if the user can use --regis-
ter-unsafely-without-email to avoid providing an e-mail
Returns
e-mail address
Return type
str
Raises errors.Error -- if the user cancels
certbot.display.ops.choose_account(accounts: List[Account]) -> Op-
tional[Account]
Choose an account.
Parameters
accounts (list) -- Containing at least one Account
certbot.display.ops.choose_values(values: List[str], question: Op-
tional[str] = None) -> List[str]
Display screen to let user pick one or multiple values from the
provided list.
Parameters
• values (list) -- Values to select from
• question (str) -- Question to ask to user while choos-
ing values
Returns
List of selected values
Return type
list
certbot.display.ops.choose_names(installer: Optional[Installer], ques-
tion: Optional[str] = None) -> List[str]
Display screen to select domains to validate.
Parameters
• installer (certbot.interfaces.Installer) -- An in-
staller object
• question (str) -- Overriding default question to ask
the user if asked to choose from domain names.
Returns
List of selected names
Return type
list of str
certbot.display.ops.get_valid_domains(domains: Iterable[str]) ->
List[str]
Helper method for choose_names that implements basic checks
on domain names
Parameters
domains (list) -- Domain names to validate
Returns
List of valid domains
Return type
list
certbot.display.ops.success_installation(domains: List[str]) -> None
Display a box confirming the installation of HTTPS.
Parameters
domains (list) -- domain names which were enabled
certbot.display.ops.success_renewal(unused_domains: List[str]) -> None
Display a box confirming the renewal of an existing certificate.
Parameters
domains (list) -- domain names which were renewed
certbot.display.ops.success_revocation(cert_path: str) -> None
Display a message confirming a certificate has been revoked.
Parameters
cert_path (list) -- path to certificate which was re-
voked.
certbot.display.ops.report_executed_command(command_name: str, return-
code: int, stdout: str, stderr: str) -> None
Display a message describing the success or failure of an exe-
cuted process (e.g. hook).
Parameters
• command_name (str) -- Human-readable description of the
executed command
• returncode (int) -- The exit code of the executed com-
mand
• stdout (str) -- The stdout output of the executed com-
mand
• stderr (str) -- The stderr output of the executed com-
mand
certbot.display.ops.validated_input(validator: Callable[[str], Any],
*args: Any, **kwargs: Any) -> Tuple[str, str]
Like input_text, but with validation.
Parameters
• validator (callable) -- A method which will be called
on the supplied input. If the method raises an er-
rors.Error, its text will be displayed and the user
will be re-prompted.
• *args (list) -- Arguments to be passed to input_text.
• **kwargs (dict) -- Arguments to be passed to
input_text.
Returns
as input_text
Return type
tuple
certbot.display.ops.validated_directory(validator: Callable[[str],
Any], *args: Any, **kwargs: Any) -> Tuple[str, str]
Like directory_select, but with validation.
Parameters
• validator (callable) -- A method which will be called
on the supplied input. If the method raises an er-
rors.Error, its text will be displayed and the user
will be re-prompted.
• *args (list) -- Arguments to be passed to
directory_select.
• **kwargs (dict) -- Arguments to be passed to
directory_select.
Returns
as directory_select
Return type
tuple
certbot.display.util module
Certbot display.
This module (certbot.display.util) or its companion certbot.display.ops
should be used whenever:
• Displaying status information to the user on the terminal
• Collecting information from the user via prompts
Other messages can use the logging module. See log.py.
certbot.display.util.OK = 'ok'
Display exit code indicating user acceptance.
certbot.display.util.CANCEL = 'cancel'
Display exit code for a user canceling the display.
certbot.display.util.notify(msg: str) -> None
Display a basic status message.
Parameters
msg (str) -- message to display
certbot.display.util.notification(message: str, pause: bool = True,
wrap: bool = True, force_interactive: bool = False, decorate: bool =
True) -> None
Displays a notification and waits for user acceptance.
Parameters
• message (str) -- Message to display
• pause (bool) -- Whether or not the program should pause
for the user's confirmation
• wrap (bool) -- Whether or not the application should
wrap text
• force_interactive (bool) -- True if it's safe to prompt
the user because it won't cause any workflow regres-
sions
• decorate (bool) -- Whether to surround the message with
a decorated frame
certbot.display.util.menu(message: str, choices: Union[List[str],
List[Tuple[str, str]]], default: Optional[int] = None, cli_flag: Op-
tional[str] = None, force_interactive: bool = False) -> Tuple[str, int]
Display a menu.
Parameters
• message (str) -- title of menu
• choices (list of tuples (tag, item) or list of descrip-
tions (tags will be enumerated)) -- Menu lines, len
must be > 0
• default -- default value to return, if interaction is
not possible
• cli_flag (str) -- option used to set this value with
the CLI
• force_interactive (bool) -- True if it's safe to prompt
the user because it won't cause any workflow regres-
sions
Returns
tuple of (code, index) where code - str display exit code
index - int index of the user's selection
Return type
tuple
certbot.display.util.input_text(message: str, default: Optional[str] =
None, cli_flag: Optional[str] = None, force_interactive: bool = False)
-> Tuple[str, str]
Accept input from the user.
Parameters
• message (str) -- message to display to the user
• default -- default value to return, if interaction is
not possible
• cli_flag (str) -- option used to set this value with
the CLI
• force_interactive (bool) -- True if it's safe to prompt
the user because it won't cause any workflow regres-
sions
Returns
tuple of (code, input) where code - str display exit code
input - str of the user's input
Return type
tuple
certbot.display.util.yesno(message: str, yes_label: str = 'Yes', no_la-
bel: str = 'No', default: Optional[bool] = None, cli_flag: Op-
tional[str] = None, force_interactive: bool = False) -> bool
Query the user with a yes/no question.
Yes and No label must begin with different letters, and must
contain at least one letter each.
Parameters
• message (str) -- question for the user
• yes_label (str) -- Label of the "Yes" parameter
• no_label (str) -- Label of the "No" parameter
• default -- default value to return, if interaction is
not possible
• cli_flag (str) -- option used to set this value with
the CLI
• force_interactive (bool) -- True if it's safe to prompt
the user because it won't cause any workflow regres-
sions
Returns
True for "Yes", False for "No"
Return type
bool
certbot.display.util.checklist(message: str, tags: List[str], default:
Optional[List[str]] = None, cli_flag: Optional[str] = None, force_in-
teractive: bool = False) -> Tuple[str, List[str]]
Display a checklist.
Parameters
• message (str) -- Message to display to user
• tags (list) -- str tags to select, len(tags) > 0
• default -- default value to return, if interaction is
not possible
• cli_flag (str) -- option used to set this value with
the CLI
• force_interactive (bool) -- True if it's safe to prompt
the user because it won't cause any workflow regres-
sions
Returns
tuple of (code, tags) where code - str display exit code
tags - list of selected tags
Return type
tuple
certbot.display.util.directory_select(message: str, default: Op-
tional[str] = None, cli_flag: Optional[str] = None, force_interactive:
bool = False) -> Tuple[str, str]
Display a directory selection screen.
Parameters
• message (str) -- prompt to give the user
• default -- default value to return, if interaction is
not possible
• cli_flag (str) -- option used to set this value with
the CLI
• force_interactive (bool) -- True if it's safe to prompt
the user because it won't cause any workflow regres-
sions
Returns
tuple of the form (code, string) where code - display
exit code string - input entered by the user
certbot.display.util.assert_valid_call(prompt: str, default: str,
cli_flag: str, force_interactive: bool) -> None
Verify that provided arguments is a valid display call.
Parameters
• prompt (str) -- prompt for the user
• default -- default answer to prompt
• cli_flag (str) -- command line option for setting an
answer to this question
• force_interactive (bool) -- if interactivity is forced
certbot.plugins package
Certbot plugins.
Submodules
certbot.plugins.common module
Plugin common functions.
certbot.plugins.common.option_namespace(name: str) -> str
ArgumentParser options namespace (prefix of all options).
certbot.plugins.common.dest_namespace(name: str) -> str
ArgumentParser dest namespace (prefix of all destinations).
class certbot.plugins.common.Plugin(config: NamespaceConfig, name: str)
Bases: Plugin
Generic plugin.
abstract classmethod add_parser_arguments(add: Callable[[...],
None]) -> None
Add plugin arguments to the CLI argument parser.
Parameters
add (callable) -- Function that proxies calls to
argparse.ArgumentParser.add_argument prepending
options with unique plugin name prefix.
classmethod inject_parser_options(parser: ArgumentParser, name:
str) -> None
Inject parser options.
See inject_parser_options for docs.
property option_namespace: str
ArgumentParser options namespace (prefix of all options).
option_name(name: str) -> str
Option name (include plugin namespace).
property dest_namespace: str
ArgumentParser dest namespace (prefix of all destina-
tions).
dest(var: str) -> str
Find a destination for given variable var.
conf(var: str) -> Any
Find a configuration value for variable var.
auth_hint(failed_achalls: List[AnnotatedChallenge]) -> str
Human-readable string to help the user troubleshoot the
authenticator.
Shown to the user if one or more of the attempted chal-
lenges were not a success.
Should describe, in simple language, what the authentica-
tor tried to do, what went wrong and what the user should
try as their "next steps".
TODO: auth_hint belongs in Authenticator but can't be
added until the next major version of Certbot. For now,
it lives in .Plugin and auth_handler will only call it on
authenticators that subclass .Plugin. For now, inherit
from Plugin to implement and/or override the method.
Parameters
failed_achalls (list) -- List of one or more
failed challenges (achallenges.AnnotatedChallenge
subclasses).
Rtype str
class certbot.plugins.common.Installer(*args: Any, **kwargs: Any)
Bases: Installer, Plugin
An installer base class with reverter and ssl_dhparam methods
defined.
Installer plugins do not have to inherit from this class.
add_to_checkpoint(save_files: Set[str], save_notes: str, tempo-
rary: bool = False) -> None
Add files to a checkpoint.
Parameters
• save_files (set) -- set of filepaths to save
• save_notes (str) -- notes about changes during
the save
• temporary (bool) -- True if the files should be
added to a temporary checkpoint rather than a
permanent one. This is usually used for changes
that will soon be reverted.
Raises .errors.PluginError -- when unable to add to
checkpoint
finalize_checkpoint(title: str) -> None
Timestamp and save changes made through the reverter.
Parameters
title (str) -- Title describing checkpoint
Raises .errors.PluginError -- when an error occurs
recovery_routine() -> None
Revert all previously modified files.
Reverts all modified files that have not been saved as a
checkpoint
Raises .errors.PluginError -- If unable to recover the
configuration
revert_temporary_config() -> None
Rollback temporary checkpoint.
Raises .errors.PluginError -- when unable to revert con-
fig
rollback_checkpoints(rollback: int = 1) -> None
Rollback saved checkpoints.
Parameters
rollback (int) -- Number of checkpoints to revert
Raises .errors.PluginError -- If there is a problem with
the input or the function is unable to correctly
revert the configuration
property ssl_dhparams: str
Full absolute path to ssl_dhparams file.
property updated_ssl_dhparams_digest: str
Full absolute path to digest of updated ssl_dhparams
file.
install_ssl_dhparams() -> None
Copy Certbot's ssl_dhparams file into the system's config
dir if required.
class certbot.plugins.common.Configurator(*args: Any, **kwargs: Any)
Bases: Installer, Authenticator
A plugin that extends certbot.plugins.common.Installer and im-
plements certbot.interfaces.Authenticator
class certbot.plugins.common.Addr(tup: Tuple[str, str], ipv6: bool =
False)
Bases: object
Represents an virtual host address.
Parameters
• addr (str) -- addr part of vhost address
• port (str) -- port number or *, or ""
classmethod fromstring(str_addr: str) -> Optional[GenericAddr]
Initialize Addr from string.
normalized_tuple() -> Tuple[str, str]
Normalized representation of addr/port tuple
get_addr() -> str
Return addr part of Addr object.
get_port() -> str
Return port.
get_addr_obj(port: str) -> GenericAddr
Return new address object with same addr and new port.
get_ipv6_exploded() -> str
Return IPv6 in normalized form
class certbot.plugins.common.ChallengePerformer(configurator:
Configurator)
Bases: object
Abstract base for challenge performers.
Variables
• configurator -- Authenticator and installer plugin
• achalls (list of KeyAuthorizationAnnotatedChallenge) --
Annotated challenges
• indices (list of int) -- Holds the indices of chal-
lenges from a larger array so the user of the class
doesn't have to.
add_chall(achall: KeyAuthorizationAnnotatedChallenge, idx: Op-
tional[int] = None) -> None
Store challenge to be performed when perform() is called.
Parameters
• achall (.KeyAuthorizationAnnotatedChallenge) --
Annotated challenge.
• idx (int) -- index to challenge in a larger ar-
ray
perform() -> List[KeyAuthorizationChallengeResponse]
Perform all added challenges.
Returns
challenge responses
Return type
list of acme.challenges.KeyAuthorizationChallen-
geResponse
certbot.plugins.common.install_version_controlled_file(dest_path: str,
digest_path: str, src_path: str, all_hashes: Iterable[str]) -> None
Copy a file into an active location (likely the system's config
dir) if required.
Parameters
• dest_path (str) -- destination path for version con-
trolled file
• digest_path (str) -- path to save a digest of the file
in
• src_path (str) -- path to version controlled file found
in distribution
• all_hashes (list) -- hashes of every released version
of the file
certbot.plugins.common.dir_setup(test_dir: str, pkg: str) -> Tuple[str,
str, str]
Setup the directories necessary for the configurator.
certbot.plugins.dns_common module
Common code for DNS Authenticator Plugins.
class certbot.plugins.dns_common.DNSAuthenticator(config: NamespaceCon-
fig, name: str)
Bases: Plugin, Authenticator
Base class for DNS Authenticators
classmethod add_parser_arguments(add: Callable[[...], None], de-
fault_propagation_seconds: int = 10) -> None
Add plugin arguments to the CLI argument parser.
Parameters
add (callable) -- Function that proxies calls to
argparse.ArgumentParser.add_argument prepending
options with unique plugin name prefix.
auth_hint(failed_achalls: List[AnnotatedChallenge]) -> str
See certbot.plugins.common.Plugin.auth_hint.
get_chall_pref(unused_domain: str) -> Iterable[Type[Challenge]]
Return collections.Iterable of challenge preferences.
Parameters
domain (str) -- Domain for which challenge prefer-
ences are sought.
Returns
collections.Iterable of challenge types (sub-
classes of acme.challenges.Challenge) with the
most preferred challenges first. If a type is not
specified, it means the Authenticator cannot per-
form the challenge.
Return type
collections.Iterable
prepare() -> None
Prepare the plugin.
Finish up any additional initialization.
Raises
• .PluginError -- when full initialization cannot
be completed.
• .MisconfigurationError -- when full initializa-
tion cannot be completed. Plugin will be dis-
played on a list of available plugins.
• .NoInstallationError -- when the necessary pro-
grams/files cannot be located. Plugin will NOT
be displayed on a list of available plugins.
• .NotSupportedError -- when the installation is
recognized, but the version is not currently
supported.
more_info() -> str
Human-readable string to help the user.
Should describe the steps taken and any relevant info to
help the user decide which plugin to use.
Rtype str
perform(achalls: List[AnnotatedChallenge]) -> List[ChallengeRe-
sponse]
Perform the given challenge.
Parameters
achalls (list) -- Non-empty (guaranteed) list of
AnnotatedChallenge instances, such that it con-
tains types found within get_chall_pref() only.
Returns
list of ACME ChallengeResponse instances corre-
sponding to each provided Challenge.
Return type
collections.List of acme.challenges.ChallengeRe-
sponse, where responses are required to be re-
turned in the same order as corresponding input
challenges
Raises .PluginError -- If some or all challenges cannot
be performed
cleanup(achalls: List[AnnotatedChallenge]) -> None
Revert changes and shutdown after challenges complete.
This method should be able to revert all changes made by
perform, even if perform exited abnormally.
Parameters
achalls (list) -- Non-empty (guaranteed) list of
AnnotatedChallenge instances, a subset of those
previously passed to perform().
Raises PluginError -- if original configuration cannot be
restored
class certbot.plugins.dns_common.CredentialsConfiguration(filename:
str, mapper: ~typing.Callable[[str], str] = <function CredentialsCon-
figuration.<lambda>>)
Bases: object
Represents a user-supplied filed which stores API credentials.
require(required_variables: Mapping[str, str]) -> None
Ensures that the supplied set of variables are all
present in the file.
Parameters
required_variables (dict) -- Map of variable which
must be present to error to display.
Raises errors.PluginError -- If one or more are missing.
conf(var: str) -> str
Find a configuration value for variable var, as trans-
formed by mapper.
Parameters
var (str) -- The variable to get.
Returns
The value of the variable.
Return type
str
certbot.plugins.dns_common.validate_file(filename: str) -> None
Ensure that the specified file exists.
certbot.plugins.dns_common.validate_file_permissions(filename: str) ->
None
Ensure that the specified file exists and warn about unsafe per-
missions.
certbot.plugins.dns_common.base_domain_name_guesses(domain: str) ->
List[str]
Return a list of progressively less-specific domain names.
One of these will probably be the domain name known to the DNS
provider.
Example
>>> base_domain_name_guesses('foo.bar.baz.example.com')
['foo.bar.baz.example.com', 'bar.baz.example.com', 'baz.example.com', 'example.com', 'com']
Parameters
domain (str) -- The domain for which to return guesses.
Returns
The a list of less specific domain names.
Return type
list
certbot.plugins.dns_common_lexicon module
Common code for DNS Authenticator Plugins built on Lexicon.
class certbot.plugins.dns_common_lexicon.LexiconClient
Bases: object
Encapsulates all communication with a DNS provider via Lexicon.
add_txt_record(domain: str, record_name: str, record_content:
str) -> None
Add a TXT record using the supplied information.
Parameters
• domain (str) -- The domain to use to look up the
managed zone.
• record_name (str) -- The record name (typically
beginning with '_acme-challenge.').
• record_content (str) -- The record content (typ-
ically the challenge validation).
Raises errors.PluginError -- if an error occurs communi-
cating with the DNS Provider API
del_txt_record(domain: str, record_name: str, record_content:
str) -> None
Delete a TXT record using the supplied information.
Parameters
• domain (str) -- The domain to use to look up the
managed zone.
• record_name (str) -- The record name (typically
beginning with '_acme-challenge.').
• record_content (str) -- The record content (typ-
ically the challenge validation).
Raises errors.PluginError -- if an error occurs communi-
cating with the DNS Provider API
certbot.plugins.dns_common_lexicon.build_lexicon_config(lexi-
con_provider_name: str, lexicon_options: Mapping[str, Any],
provider_options: Mapping[str, Any]) -> Union[None, Dict[str, Any]]
Convenient function to build a Lexicon 2.x/3.x config object.
:param str lexicon_provider_name: the name of the lexicon
provider to use :param dict lexicon_options: options specific to
lexicon :param dict provider_options: options specific to
provider :return: configuration to apply to the provider :rtype:
ConfigurationResolver or dict
certbot.plugins.dns_test_common module
Base test class for DNS authenticators.
class certbot.plugins.dns_test_common.BaseAuthenticatorTest
Bases: object
A base test class to reduce duplication between test code for
DNS Authenticator Plugins.
Assumes:
• That subclasses also subclass unittest.TestCase
• That the authenticator is stored as self.auth
achall = KeyAuthorizationAnnotatedChallenge(challb=DNS01(to-
ken=b'17817c66b60ce2e4012dfad92657527a'), domain='example.com',
account_key=JWKRSA(key=<ComparableRSAKey(<cryptography.haz-
mat.backends.openssl.rsa._RSAPrivateKey object>)>))
test_more_info() -> None
test_get_chall_pref() -> None
test_parser_arguments() -> None
certbot.plugins.dns_test_common.write(values: Mapping[str, Any], path:
str) -> None
Write the specified values to a config file.
Parameters
• values (dict) -- A map of values to write.
• path (str) -- Where to write the values.
certbot.plugins.dns_test_common_lexicon module
Base test class for DNS authenticators built on Lexicon.
class certbot.plugins.dns_test_common_lexicon.BaseLexiconAuthentica-
torTest
Bases: BaseAuthenticatorTest
test_perform(unused_mock_get_utility: Any) -> None
test_cleanup() -> None
class certbot.plugins.dns_test_common_lexicon.BaseLexiconClientTest
Bases: object
DOMAIN_NOT_FOUND = Exception('No domain found')
GENERIC_ERROR
alias of RequestException
LOGIN_ERROR = HTTPError('400 Client Error: ...')
UNKNOWN_LOGIN_ERROR = HTTPError('500 Surprise! Error: ...')
record_prefix = '_acme-challenge'
record_name = '_acme-challenge.example.com'
record_content = 'bar'
test_add_txt_record() -> None
test_add_txt_record_try_twice_to_find_domain() -> None
test_add_txt_record_fail_to_find_domain() -> None
test_add_txt_record_fail_to_authenticate() -> None
test_add_txt_record_fail_to_authenticate_with_unknown_error() ->
None
test_add_txt_record_error_finding_domain() -> None
test_add_txt_record_error_adding_record() -> None
test_del_txt_record() -> None
test_del_txt_record_fail_to_find_domain() -> None
test_del_txt_record_fail_to_authenticate() -> None
test_del_txt_record_fail_to_authenticate_with_unknown_error() ->
None
test_del_txt_record_error_finding_domain() -> None
test_del_txt_record_error_deleting_record() -> None
certbot.plugins.enhancements module
New interface style Certbot enhancements
certbot.plugins.enhancements.ENHANCEMENTS = ['redirect', 'en-
sure-http-header', 'ocsp-stapling']
List of possible certbot.interfaces.Installer enhancements.
List of expected options parameters: - redirect: None - en-
sure-http-header: name of header (i.e. Strict-Transport-Secu-
rity) - ocsp-stapling: certificate chain file path
certbot.plugins.enhancements.enabled_enhancements(config: NamespaceCon-
fig) -> Generator[Dict[str, Any], None, None]
Generator to yield the enabled new style enhancements.
Parameters
config (certbot.configuration.NamespaceConfig) -- Config-
uration.
certbot.plugins.enhancements.are_requested(config: NamespaceConfig) ->
bool
Checks if one or more of the requested enhancements are those of
the new enhancement interfaces.
Parameters
config (certbot.configuration.NamespaceConfig) -- Config-
uration.
certbot.plugins.enhancements.are_supported(config: NamespaceConfig, in-
staller: Optional[Installer]) -> bool
Checks that all of the requested enhancements are supported by
the installer.
Parameters
• config (certbot.configuration.NamespaceConfig) -- Con-
figuration.
• installer (interfaces.Installer) -- Installer object
Returns
If all the requested enhancements are supported by the
installer
Return type
bool
certbot.plugins.enhancements.enable(lineage: Optional[RenewableCert],
domains: Iterable[str], installer: Optional[Installer], config: Names-
paceConfig) -> None
Run enable method for each requested enhancement that is sup-
ported.
Parameters
• lineage (certbot.interfaces.RenewableCert) -- Certifi-
cate lineage object
• domains (str) -- List of domains in certificate to en-
hance
• installer (interfaces.Installer) -- Installer object
• config (certbot.configuration.NamespaceConfig) -- Con-
figuration.
certbot.plugins.enhancements.populate_cli(add: Callable[[...], None])
-> None
Populates the command line flags for certbot._internal.cli.Help-
fulParser
Parameters
add (func) -- Add function of certbot._internal.cli.Help-
fulParser
class certbot.plugins.enhancements.AutoHSTSEnhancement
Bases: object
Enhancement interface that installer plugins can implement in
order to provide functionality that configures the software to
have a 'Strict-Transport-Security' with initially low max-age
value that will increase over time.
The plugins implementing new style enhancements are responsible
of handling the saving of configuration checkpoints as well as
calling possible restarts of managed software themselves. For
update_autohsts method, the installer may have to call prepare()
to finalize the plugin initialization.
Methods:
enable_autohsts is called when the header is initially
installed using a low max-age value.
update_autohsts is called every time when Certbot is run
using 'renew' verb. The max-age value should be increased
over time using this method.
deploy_autohsts is called for every lineage that has had
its certificate renewed. A long HSTS max-age value should
be set here, as we should be confident that the user is
able to automatically renew their certificates.
abstract update_autohsts(lineage: RenewableCert, *args: Any,
**kwargs: Any) -> None
Gets called for each lineage every time Certbot is run
with 'renew' verb. Implementation of this method should
increase the max-age value.
Parameters
lineage (certbot.interfaces.RenewableCert) -- Cer-
tificate lineage object
NOTE:
prepare() method inherited from interfaces.Plugin
might need to be called manually within implementation
of this interface method to finalize the plugin ini-
tialization.
abstract deploy_autohsts(lineage: RenewableCert, *args: Any,
**kwargs: Any) -> None
Gets called for a lineage when its certificate is suc-
cessfully renewed. Long max-age value should be set in
implementation of this method.
Parameters
lineage (certbot.interfaces.RenewableCert) -- Cer-
tificate lineage object
abstract enable_autohsts(lineage: Optional[RenewableCert], do-
mains: Iterable[str], *args: Any, **kwargs: Any) -> None
Enables the AutoHSTS enhancement, installing
Strict-Transport-Security header with a low initial value
to be increased over the subsequent runs of Certbot re-
new.
Parameters
• lineage (certbot.interfaces.RenewableCert) --
Certificate lineage object
• domains (list of str) -- List of domains in cer-
tificate to enhance
certbot.plugins.storage module
Plugin storage class.
class certbot.plugins.storage.PluginStorage(config: NamespaceConfig,
classkey: str)
Bases: object
Class implementing storage functionality for plugins
save() -> None
Saves PluginStorage content to disk
Raises .errors.PluginStorageError -- when unable to seri-
alize the data or write it to the filesystem
put(key: str, value: Any) -> None
Put configuration value to PluginStorage
Parameters
• key (str) -- Key to store the value to
• value -- Data to store
fetch(key: str) -> Any
Get configuration value from PluginStorage
Parameters
key (str) -- Key to get value from the storage
Raises KeyError -- If the key doesn't exist in the stor-
age
certbot.plugins.util module
Plugin utilities.
certbot.plugins.util.get_prefixes(path: str) -> List[str]
Retrieves all possible path prefixes of a path, in descending
order of length. For instance:
• (Linux) /a/b/c returns ['/a/b/c', '/a/b', '/a', '/']
• (Windows) C:abc returns ['C:abc', 'C:ab', 'C:a', 'C:']
Parameters
path (str) -- the path to break into prefixes
Returns
all possible path prefixes of given path in descending
order
Return type
list of str
certbot.plugins.util.path_surgery(cmd: str) -> bool
Attempt to perform PATH surgery to find cmd
Mitigates https://github.com/certbot/certbot/issues/1833
Parameters
cmd (str) -- the command that is being searched for in
the PATH
Returns
True if the operation succeeded, False otherwise
certbot.tests package
Utilities for running Certbot tests
Submodules
certbot.tests.acme_util module
ACME utilities for testing.
certbot.tests.acme_util.chall_to_challb(chall: Challenge, status: Sta-
tus) -> ChallengeBody
Return ChallengeBody from Challenge.
certbot.tests.acme_util.gen_authzr(authz_status: Status, domain: str,
challs: Iterable[Challenge], statuses: Iterable[Status]) -> Authoriza-
tionResource
Generate an authorization resource.
Parameters
• authz_status (acme.messages.Status) -- Status object
• challs (list) -- Challenge objects
• statuses (list) -- status of each challenge object
certbot.tests.util module
Test utilities.
class certbot.tests.util.DummyInstaller(*args: Any, **kwargs: Any)
Bases: Installer
Dummy installer plugin for test purpose.
get_all_names() -> Iterable[str]
Returns all names that may be authenticated.
Return type
collections.Iterable of str
deploy_cert(domain: str, cert_path: str, key_path: str,
chain_path: str, fullchain_path: str) -> None
Deploy certificate.
Parameters
• domain (str) -- domain to deploy certificate
file
• cert_path (str) -- absolute path to the certifi-
cate file
• key_path (str) -- absolute path to the private
key file
• chain_path (str) -- absolute path to the cer-
tificate chain file
• fullchain_path (str) -- absolute path to the
certificate fullchain file (cert plus chain)
Raises .PluginError -- when cert cannot be deployed
enhance(domain: str, enhancement: str, options: Op-
tional[Union[List[str], str]] = None) -> None
Perform a configuration enhancement.
Parameters
• domain (str) -- domain for which to provide en-
hancement
• enhancement (str) -- An enhancement as defined
in ENHANCEMENTS
• options -- Flexible options parameter for en-
hancement. Check documentation of ENHANCEMENTS
for expected options for each enhancement.
Raises .PluginError -- If Enhancement is not supported,
or if an error occurs during the enhancement.
supported_enhancements() -> List[str]
Returns a collections.Iterable of supported enhancements.
Returns
supported enhancements which should be a subset of
ENHANCEMENTS
Return type
collections.Iterable of str
save(title: Optional[str] = None, temporary: bool = False) ->
None
Saves all changes to the configuration files.
Both title and temporary are needed because a save may be
intended to be permanent, but the save is not ready to be
a full checkpoint.
It is assumed that at most one checkpoint is finalized by
this method. Additionally, if an exception is raised, it
is assumed a new checkpoint was not finalized.
Parameters
• title (str) -- The title of the save. If a title
is given, the configuration will be saved as a
new checkpoint and put in a timestamped direc-
tory. title has no effect if temporary is true.
• temporary (bool) -- Indicates whether the
changes made will be quickly reversed in the fu-
ture (challenges)
Raises .PluginError -- when save is unsuccessful
config_test() -> None
Make sure the configuration is valid.
Raises .MisconfigurationError -- when the config is not
in a usable state
restart() -> None
Restart or refresh the server content.
Raises .PluginError -- when server cannot be restarted
classmethod add_parser_arguments(add: Callable[[...], None]) ->
None
Add plugin arguments to the CLI argument parser.
Parameters
add (callable) -- Function that proxies calls to
argparse.ArgumentParser.add_argument prepending
options with unique plugin name prefix.
prepare() -> None
Prepare the plugin.
Finish up any additional initialization.
Raises
• .PluginError -- when full initialization cannot
be completed.
• .MisconfigurationError -- when full initializa-
tion cannot be completed. Plugin will be dis-
played on a list of available plugins.
• .NoInstallationError -- when the necessary pro-
grams/files cannot be located. Plugin will NOT
be displayed on a list of available plugins.
• .NotSupportedError -- when the installation is
recognized, but the version is not currently
supported.
more_info() -> str
Human-readable string to help the user.
Should describe the steps taken and any relevant info to
help the user decide which plugin to use.
Rtype str
certbot.tests.util.vector_path(*names: str) -> str
Path to a test vector.
certbot.tests.util.load_vector(*names: str) -> bytes
Load contents of a test vector.
certbot.tests.util.load_cert(*names: str) -> X509
Load certificate.
certbot.tests.util.load_csr(*names: str) -> X509Req
Load certificate request.
certbot.tests.util.load_comparable_csr(*names: str) -> ComparableX509
Load ComparableX509 certificate request.
certbot.tests.util.load_rsa_private_key(*names: str) -> ComparableR-
SAKey
Load RSA private key.
certbot.tests.util.load_pyopenssl_private_key(*names: str) -> PKey
Load pyOpenSSL private key.
certbot.tests.util.make_lineage(config_dir: str, testfile: str, ec:
bool = True) -> str
Creates a lineage defined by testfile.
This creates the archive, live, and renewal directories if nec-
essary and creates a simple lineage.
Parameters
• config_dir (str) -- path to the configuration directory
• testfile (str) -- configuration file to base the lin-
eage on
• ec (bool) -- True if we generate the lineage with an
ECDSA key
Returns
path to the renewal conf file for the created lineage
Return type
str
certbot.tests.util.patch_display_util() -> MagicMock
Patch certbot.display.util to use a special mock display util-
ity.
The mock display utility works like a regular mock object, ex-
cept it also also asserts that methods are called with valid ar-
guments.
The mock created by this patch mocks out Certbot internals. That
is, the mock object will be called by the certbot.display.util
functions and the mock returned by that call will be used as the
display utility. This was done to simplify the transition from
zope.component and mocking certbot.display.util functions di-
rectly in test code should be preferred over using this function
in the future.
See https://github.com/certbot/certbot/issues/8948
Returns
patch on the function used internally by certbot.dis-
play.util to get a display utility instance
Return type
mock.MagicMock
certbot.tests.util.patch_display_util_with_stdout(stdout: Optional[IO]
= None) -> MagicMock
Patch certbot.display.util to use a special mock display util-
ity.
The mock display utility works like a regular mock object, ex-
cept it also asserts that methods are called with valid argu-
ments.
The mock created by this patch mocks out Certbot internals. That
is, the mock object will be called by the certbot.display.util
functions and the mock returned by that call will be used as the
display utility. This was done to simplify the transition from
zope.component and mocking certbot.display.util functions di-
rectly in test code should be preferred over using this function
in the future.
See https://github.com/certbot/certbot/issues/8948
The message argument passed to the display utility methods is
passed to stdout's write method.
Parameters
stdout (object) -- object to write standard output to; it
is expected to have a write method
Returns
patch on the function used internally by certbot.dis-
play.util to get a display utility instance
Return type
mock.MagicMock
class certbot.tests.util.FreezableMock(frozen: bool = False, func: Op-
tional[Callable[[...], Any]] = None, return_value: Any = sentinel.DE-
FAULT)
Bases: object
Mock object with the ability to freeze attributes.
This class works like a regular mock.MagicMock object, except
attributes and behavior set before the object is frozen cannot
be changed during tests.
If a func argument is provided to the constructor, this function
is called first when an instance of FreezableMock is called,
followed by the usual behavior defined by MagicMock. The return
value of func is ignored.
freeze() -> None
Freeze object preventing further changes.
class certbot.tests.util.TempDirTestCase(methodName='runTest')
Bases: TestCase
Base test class which sets up and tears down a temporary direc-
tory
setUp() -> None
Execute before test
tearDown() -> None
Execute after test
class certbot.tests.util.ConfigTestCase(methodName='runTest')
Bases: TempDirTestCase
Test class which sets up a NamespaceConfig object.
setUp() -> None
Execute before test
certbot.tests.util.lock_and_call(callback: Callable[[], Any],
path_to_lock: str) -> None
Grab a lock on path_to_lock from a foreign process then execute
the callback. :param callable callback: object to call after
acquiring the lock :param str path_to_lock: path to file or di-
rectory to lock
certbot.tests.util.skip_on_windows(reason: str) ->
Callable[[Callable[[...], Any]], Callable[[...], Any]]
Decorator to skip permanently a test on Windows. A reason is re-
quired.
certbot.tests.util.temp_join(path: str) -> str
Return the given path joined to the tempdir path for the current
platform Eg.: 'cert' => /tmp/cert (Linux) or 'C:Userscurren-
tuserAppDataTempcert' (Windows)
Submodules
certbot.achallenges module
Client annotated ACME challenges.
Please use names such as achall to distinguish from variables "of type"
acme.challenges.Challenge (denoted by chall) and ChallengeBody (denoted
by challb):
from acme import challenges
from acme import messages
from certbot import achallenges
chall = challenges.DNS(token='foo')
challb = messages.ChallengeBody(chall=chall)
achall = achallenges.DNS(chall=challb, domain='example.com')
Note, that all annotated challenges act as a proxy objects:
achall.token == challb.token
class certbot.achallenges.AnnotatedChallenge(**kwargs: Any)
Bases: ImmutableMap
Client annotated challenge.
Wraps around server provided challenge and annotates with data
useful for the client.
Variables
~.challb -- Wrapped ChallengeBody.
challb
class certbot.achallenges.KeyAuthorizationAnnotatedChallenge(**kwargs:
Any)
Bases: AnnotatedChallenge
Client annotated KeyAuthorizationChallenge challenge.
response_and_validation(*args: Any, **kwargs: Any) -> Any
Generate response and validation.
challb
domain
account_key
class certbot.achallenges.DNS(**kwargs: Any)
Bases: AnnotatedChallenge
Client annotated "dns" ACME challenge.
acme_type
alias of DNS
challb
domain
certbot.crypto_util module
Certbot client crypto utility functions.
certbot.crypto_util.generate_key(key_size: int, key_dir: str, key_type:
str = 'rsa', elliptic_curve: str = 'secp256r1', keyname: str =
'key-certbot.pem', strict_permissions: bool = True) -> Key
Initializes and saves a privkey.
Inits key and saves it in PEM format on the filesystem.
NOTE:
keyname is the attempted filename, it may be different if a
file already exists at the path.
Parameters
• key_size (int) -- key size in bits if key size is rsa.
• key_dir (str) -- Key save directory.
• key_type (str) -- Key Type [rsa, ecdsa]
• elliptic_curve (str) -- Name of the elliptic curve if
key type is ecdsa.
• keyname (str) -- Filename of key
• strict_permissions (bool) -- If true and key_dir ex-
ists, an exception is raised if the directory doesn't
have 0700 permissions or isn't owned by the current
user.
Returns
Key
Return type
certbot.util.Key
Raises ValueError -- If unable to generate the key given
key_size.
certbot.crypto_util.generate_csr(privkey: Key, names: Union[List[str],
Set[str]], path: str, must_staple: bool = False, strict_permissions:
bool = True) -> CSR
Initialize a CSR with the given private key.
Parameters
• privkey (certbot.util.Key) -- Key to include in the CSR
• names (set) -- str names to include in the CSR
• path (str) -- Certificate save directory.
• must_staple (bool) -- If true, include the TLS Feature
extension "OCSP Must-Staple"
• strict_permissions (bool) -- If true and path exists,
an exception is raised if the directory doesn't have
0755 permissions or isn't owned by the current user.
Returns
CSR
Return type
certbot.util.CSR
certbot.crypto_util.valid_csr(csr: bytes) -> bool
Validate CSR.
Check if csr is a valid CSR for the given domains.
Parameters
csr (bytes) -- CSR in PEM.
Returns
Validity of CSR.
Return type
bool
certbot.crypto_util.csr_matches_pubkey(csr: bytes, privkey: bytes) ->
bool
Does private key correspond to the subject public key in the
CSR?
Parameters
• csr (bytes) -- CSR in PEM.
• privkey (bytes) -- Private key file contents (PEM)
Returns
Correspondence of private key to CSR subject public key.
Return type
bool
certbot.crypto_util.import_csr_file(csrfile: str, data: bytes) -> Tu-
ple[int, CSR, List[str]]
Import a CSR file, which can be either PEM or DER.
Parameters
• csrfile (str) -- CSR filename
• data (bytes) -- contents of the CSR file
Returns
(crypto.FILETYPE_PEM, util.CSR object representing the
CSR, list of domains requested in the CSR)
Return type
tuple
certbot.crypto_util.make_key(bits: int = 1024, key_type: str = 'rsa',
elliptic_curve: Optional[str] = None) -> bytes
Generate PEM encoded RSA|EC key.
Parameters
• bits (int) -- Number of bits if key_type=rsa. At least
1024 for RSA.
• key_type (str) -- The type of key to generate, but be
rsa or ecdsa
• elliptic_curve (str) -- The elliptic curve to use.
Returns
new RSA or ECDSA key in PEM form with specified number of
bits or of type ec_curve when key_type ecdsa is used.
Return type
str
certbot.crypto_util.valid_privkey(privkey: str) -> bool
Is valid RSA private key?
Parameters
privkey (str) -- Private key file contents in PEM
Returns
Validity of private key.
Return type
bool
certbot.crypto_util.verify_renewable_cert(renewable_cert:
RenewableCert) -> None
For checking that your certs were not corrupted on disk.
Several things are checked:
1. Signature verification for the cert.
2. That fullchain matches cert and chain when concate-
nated.
3. Check that the private key matches the certificate.
Parameters
renewable_cert (certbot.interfaces.RenewableCert) -- cert
to verify
Raises errors.Error -- If verification fails.
certbot.crypto_util.verify_renewable_cert_sig(renewable_cert:
RenewableCert) -> None
Verifies the signature of a RenewableCert object.
Parameters
renewable_cert (certbot.interfaces.RenewableCert) -- cert
to verify
Raises errors.Error -- If signature verification fails.
certbot.crypto_util.verify_signed_payload(public_key: Union[DSAPub-
licKey, Ed25519PublicKey, Ed448PublicKey, EllipticCurvePublicKey, RSA-
PublicKey], signature: bytes, payload: bytes, signature_hash_algorithm:
HashAlgorithm) -> None
Check the signature of a payload.
Parameters
• public_key (RSAPublicKey/EllipticCurvePublicKey) -- the
public_key to check signature
• signature (bytes) -- the signature bytes
• payload (bytes) -- the payload bytes
• signature_hash_algorithm (hashes.HashAlgorithm) -- al-
gorithm used to hash the payload
Raises
• InvalidSignature -- If signature verification fails.
• errors.Error -- If public key type is not supported
certbot.crypto_util.verify_cert_matches_priv_key(cert_path: str,
key_path: str) -> None
Verifies that the private key and cert match.
Parameters
• cert_path (str) -- path to a cert in PEM format
• key_path (str) -- path to a private key file
Raises errors.Error -- If they don't match.
certbot.crypto_util.verify_fullchain(renewable_cert: RenewableCert) ->
None
Verifies that fullchain is indeed cert concatenated with chain.
Parameters
renewable_cert (certbot.interfaces.RenewableCert) -- cert
to verify
Raises errors.Error -- If cert and chain do not combine to
fullchain.
certbot.crypto_util.pyopenssl_load_certificate(data: bytes) -> Tu-
ple[X509, int]
Load PEM/DER certificate.
Raises errors.Error --
certbot.crypto_util.get_sans_from_cert(cert: bytes, typ: int = 1) ->
List[str]
Get a list of Subject Alternative Names from a certificate.
Parameters
• cert (str) -- Certificate (encoded).
• typ -- crypto.FILETYPE_PEM or crypto.FILETYPE_ASN1
Returns
A list of Subject Alternative Names.
Return type
list
certbot.crypto_util.get_names_from_cert(cert: bytes, typ: int = 1) ->
List[str]
Get a list of domains from a cert, including the CN if it is
set.
Parameters
• cert (str) -- Certificate (encoded).
• typ -- crypto.FILETYPE_PEM or crypto.FILETYPE_ASN1
Returns
A list of domain names.
Return type
list
certbot.crypto_util.get_names_from_req(csr: bytes, typ: int = 1) ->
List[str]
Get a list of domains from a CSR, including the CN if it is set.
Parameters
• csr (str) -- CSR (encoded).
• typ -- crypto.FILETYPE_PEM or crypto.FILETYPE_ASN1
Returns
A list of domain names.
Return type
list
certbot.crypto_util.dump_pyopenssl_chain(chain: Union[List[X509],
List[ComparableX509]], filetype: int = 1) -> bytes
Dump certificate chain into a bundle.
Parameters
chain (list) -- List of crypto.X509 (or wrapped in
josepy.util.ComparableX509).
certbot.crypto_util.notBefore(cert_path: str) -> datetime
When does the cert at cert_path start being valid?
Parameters
cert_path (str) -- path to a cert in PEM format
Returns
the notBefore value from the cert at cert_path
Return type
datetime.datetime
certbot.crypto_util.notAfter(cert_path: str) -> datetime
When does the cert at cert_path stop being valid?
Parameters
cert_path (str) -- path to a cert in PEM format
Returns
the notAfter value from the cert at cert_path
Return type
datetime.datetime
certbot.crypto_util.sha256sum(filename: str) -> str
Compute a sha256sum of a file.
NB: In given file, platform specific newlines characters will be
converted into their equivalent unicode counterparts before cal-
culating the hash.
Parameters
filename (str) -- path to the file whose hash will be
computed
Returns
sha256 digest of the file in hexadecimal
Return type
str
certbot.crypto_util.cert_and_chain_from_fullchain(fullchain_pem: str)
-> Tuple[str, str]
Split fullchain_pem into cert_pem and chain_pem
Parameters
fullchain_pem (str) -- concatenated cert + chain
Returns
tuple of string cert_pem and chain_pem
Return type
tuple
Raises errors.Error -- If there are less than 2 certificates in
the chain.
certbot.crypto_util.get_serial_from_cert(cert_path: str) -> int
Retrieve the serial number of a certificate from certificate
path
Parameters
cert_path (str) -- path to a cert in PEM format
Returns
serial number of the certificate
Return type
int
certbot.crypto_util.find_chain_with_issuer(fullchains: List[str], is-
suer_cn: str, warn_on_no_match: bool = False) -> str
Chooses the first certificate chain from fullchains whose top-
most intermediate has an Issuer Common Name matching issuer_cn
(in other words the first chain which chains to a root whose
name matches issuer_cn).
Parameters
• fullchains (list of str) -- The list of fullchains in
PEM chain format.
• issuer_cn (str) -- The exact Subject Common Name to
match against any issuer in the certificate chain.
Returns
The best-matching fullchain, PEM-encoded, or the first if
none match.
Return type
str
certbot.errors module
Certbot client errors.
exception certbot.errors.Error
Bases: Exception
Generic Certbot client error.
exception certbot.errors.AccountStorageError
Bases: Error
Generic AccountStorage error.
exception certbot.errors.AccountNotFound
Bases: AccountStorageError
Account not found error.
exception certbot.errors.ReverterError
Bases: Error
Certbot Reverter error.
exception certbot.errors.SubprocessError
Bases: Error
Subprocess handling error.
exception certbot.errors.CertStorageError
Bases: Error
Generic CertStorage error.
exception certbot.errors.HookCommandNotFound
Bases: Error
Failed to find a hook command in the PATH.
exception certbot.errors.SignalExit
Bases: Error
A Unix signal was received while in the ErrorHandler context
manager.
exception certbot.errors.OverlappingMatchFound
Bases: Error
Multiple lineages matched what should have been a unique result.
exception certbot.errors.LockError
Bases: Error
File locking error.
exception certbot.errors.AuthorizationError
Bases: Error
Authorization error.
exception certbot.errors.FailedChallenges(failed_achalls: Set[-
AnnotatedChallenge])
Bases: AuthorizationError
Failed challenges error.
Variables
failed_achalls (set) -- Failed AnnotatedChallenge in-
stances.
exception certbot.errors.PluginError
Bases: Error
Certbot Plugin error.
exception certbot.errors.PluginEnhancementAlreadyPresent
Bases: Error
Enhancement was already set
exception certbot.errors.PluginSelectionError
Bases: Error
A problem with plugin/configurator selection or setup
exception certbot.errors.NoInstallationError
Bases: PluginError
Certbot No Installation error.
exception certbot.errors.MisconfigurationError
Bases: PluginError
Certbot Misconfiguration error.
exception certbot.errors.NotSupportedError
Bases: PluginError
Certbot Plugin function not supported error.
exception certbot.errors.PluginStorageError
Bases: PluginError
Certbot Plugin Storage error.
exception certbot.errors.StandaloneBindError(socket_error: OSError,
port: int)
Bases: Error
Standalone plugin bind error.
exception certbot.errors.ConfigurationError
Bases: Error
Configuration sanity error.
exception certbot.errors.MissingCommandlineFlag
Bases: Error
A command line argument was missing in noninteractive usage
certbot.interfaces module
Certbot client interfaces.
class certbot.interfaces.AccountStorage
Bases: object
Accounts storage interface.
abstract find_all() -> List[Account]
Find all accounts.
Returns
All found accounts.
Return type
list
abstract load(account_id: str) -> Account
Load an account by its id.
Raises
• .AccountNotFound -- if account could not be
found
• .AccountStorageError -- if account could not be
loaded
Returns
The account loaded
Return type
.Account
abstract save(account: Account, client: ClientV2) -> None
Save account.
Raises .AccountStorageError -- if account could not be
saved
class certbot.interfaces.Plugin(config: Optional[NamespaceConfig],
name: str)
Bases: object
Certbot plugin.
Objects providing this interface will be called without satisfy-
ing any entry point "extras" (extra dependencies) you might have
defined for your plugin, e.g (excerpt from setup.py script):
setup(
...
entry_points={
'certbot.plugins': [
'name=example_project.plugin[plugin_deps]',
],
},
extras_require={
'plugin_deps': ['dep1', 'dep2'],
}
)
Therefore, make sure such objects are importable and usable
without extras. This is necessary, because CLI does the follow-
ing operations (in order):
• loads an entry point,
• calls inject_parser_options,
• requires an entry point,
• creates plugin instance (__call__).
description: str = NotImplemented
Short plugin description
name: str = NotImplemented
Unique name of the plugin
abstract prepare() -> None
Prepare the plugin.
Finish up any additional initialization.
Raises
• .PluginError -- when full initialization cannot
be completed.
• .MisconfigurationError -- when full initializa-
tion cannot be completed. Plugin will be dis-
played on a list of available plugins.
• .NoInstallationError -- when the necessary pro-
grams/files cannot be located. Plugin will NOT
be displayed on a list of available plugins.
• .NotSupportedError -- when the installation is
recognized, but the version is not currently
supported.
abstract more_info() -> str
Human-readable string to help the user.
Should describe the steps taken and any relevant info to
help the user decide which plugin to use.
Rtype str
abstract classmethod inject_parser_options(parser: Argument-
Parser, name: str) -> None
Inject argument parser options (flags).
1. Be nice and prepend all options and destinations with
option_namespace and dest_namespace.
2. Inject options (flags) only. Positional arguments are
not allowed, as this would break the CLI.
Parameters
• parser (ArgumentParser) -- (Almost) top-level
CLI parser.
• name (str) -- Unique plugin name.
class certbot.interfaces.Authenticator(config: Optional[NamespaceCon-
fig], name: str)
Bases: Plugin
Generic Certbot Authenticator.
Class represents all possible tools processes that have the
ability to perform challenges and attain a certificate.
abstract get_chall_pref(domain: str) -> Iterable[Type[Chal-
lenge]]
Return collections.Iterable of challenge preferences.
Parameters
domain (str) -- Domain for which challenge prefer-
ences are sought.
Returns
collections.Iterable of challenge types (sub-
classes of acme.challenges.Challenge) with the
most preferred challenges first. If a type is not
specified, it means the Authenticator cannot per-
form the challenge.
Return type
collections.Iterable
abstract perform(achalls: List[AnnotatedChallenge]) ->
List[ChallengeResponse]
Perform the given challenge.
Parameters
achalls (list) -- Non-empty (guaranteed) list of
AnnotatedChallenge instances, such that it con-
tains types found within get_chall_pref() only.
Returns
list of ACME ChallengeResponse instances corre-
sponding to each provided Challenge.
Return type
collections.List of acme.challenges.ChallengeRe-
sponse, where responses are required to be re-
turned in the same order as corresponding input
challenges
Raises .PluginError -- If some or all challenges cannot
be performed
abstract cleanup(achalls: List[AnnotatedChallenge]) -> None
Revert changes and shutdown after challenges complete.
This method should be able to revert all changes made by
perform, even if perform exited abnormally.
Parameters
achalls (list) -- Non-empty (guaranteed) list of
AnnotatedChallenge instances, a subset of those
previously passed to perform().
Raises PluginError -- if original configuration cannot be
restored
class certbot.interfaces.Installer(config: Optional[NamespaceConfig],
name: str)
Bases: Plugin
Generic Certbot Installer Interface.
Represents any server that an X509 certificate can be placed.
It is assumed that save() is the only method that finalizes a
checkpoint. This is important to ensure that checkpoints are re-
stored in a consistent manner if requested by the user or in
case of an error.
Using certbot.reverter.Reverter to implement checkpoints, roll-
back, and recovery can dramatically simplify plugin development.
abstract get_all_names() -> Iterable[str]
Returns all names that may be authenticated.
Return type
collections.Iterable of str
abstract deploy_cert(domain: str, cert_path: str, key_path: str,
chain_path: str, fullchain_path: str) -> None
Deploy certificate.
Parameters
• domain (str) -- domain to deploy certificate
file
• cert_path (str) -- absolute path to the certifi-
cate file
• key_path (str) -- absolute path to the private
key file
• chain_path (str) -- absolute path to the cer-
tificate chain file
• fullchain_path (str) -- absolute path to the
certificate fullchain file (cert plus chain)
Raises .PluginError -- when cert cannot be deployed
abstract enhance(domain: str, enhancement: str, options: Op-
tional[Union[List[str], str]] = None) -> None
Perform a configuration enhancement.
Parameters
• domain (str) -- domain for which to provide en-
hancement
• enhancement (str) -- An enhancement as defined
in ENHANCEMENTS
• options -- Flexible options parameter for en-
hancement. Check documentation of ENHANCEMENTS
for expected options for each enhancement.
Raises .PluginError -- If Enhancement is not supported,
or if an error occurs during the enhancement.
abstract supported_enhancements() -> List[str]
Returns a collections.Iterable of supported enhancements.
Returns
supported enhancements which should be a subset of
ENHANCEMENTS
Return type
collections.Iterable of str
abstract save(title: Optional[str] = None, temporary: bool =
False) -> None
Saves all changes to the configuration files.
Both title and temporary are needed because a save may be
intended to be permanent, but the save is not ready to be
a full checkpoint.
It is assumed that at most one checkpoint is finalized by
this method. Additionally, if an exception is raised, it
is assumed a new checkpoint was not finalized.
Parameters
• title (str) -- The title of the save. If a title
is given, the configuration will be saved as a
new checkpoint and put in a timestamped direc-
tory. title has no effect if temporary is true.
• temporary (bool) -- Indicates whether the
changes made will be quickly reversed in the fu-
ture (challenges)
Raises .PluginError -- when save is unsuccessful
abstract rollback_checkpoints(rollback: int = 1) -> None
Revert rollback number of configuration checkpoints.
Raises .PluginError -- when configuration cannot be fully
reverted
abstract recovery_routine() -> None
Revert configuration to most recent finalized checkpoint.
Remove all changes (temporary and permanent) that have
not been finalized. This is useful to protect against
crashes and other execution interruptions.
Raises .errors.PluginError -- If unable to recover the
configuration
abstract config_test() -> None
Make sure the configuration is valid.
Raises .MisconfigurationError -- when the config is not
in a usable state
abstract restart() -> None
Restart or refresh the server content.
Raises .PluginError -- when server cannot be restarted
class certbot.interfaces.RenewableCert
Bases: object
Interface to a certificate lineage.
abstract property cert_path: str
Path to the certificate file.
Return type
str
abstract property key_path: str
Path to the private key file.
Return type
str
abstract property chain_path: str
Path to the certificate chain file.
Return type
str
abstract property fullchain_path: str
Path to the full chain file.
The full chain is the certificate file plus the chain
file.
Return type
str
abstract property lineagename: str
Name given to the certificate lineage.
Return type
str
abstract names() -> List[str]
What are the subject names of this certificate?
Returns
the subject names
Return type
list of str
Raises .CertStorageError -- if could not find cert file.
class certbot.interfaces.GenericUpdater
Bases: object
Interface for update types not currently specified by Certbot.
This class allows plugins to perform types of updates that Cert-
bot hasn't defined (yet).
To make use of this interface, the installer should implement
the interface methods, and interfaces.GenericUpdater.regis-
ter(InstallerClass) should be called from the installer code.
The plugins implementing this enhancement are responsible of
handling the saving of configuration checkpoints as well as
other calls to interface methods of interfaces.Installer such as
prepare() and restart()
abstract generic_updates(lineage: RenewableCert, *args: Any,
**kwargs: Any) -> None
Perform any update types defined by the installer.
If an installer is a subclass of the class containing
this method, this function will always be called when
"certbot renew" is run. If the update defined by the in-
staller should be run conditionally, the installer needs
to handle checking the conditions itself.
This method is called once for each lineage.
Parameters
lineage (RenewableCert) -- Certificate lineage ob-
ject
class certbot.interfaces.RenewDeployer
Bases: object
Interface for update types run when a lineage is renewed
This class allows plugins to perform types of updates that need
to run at lineage renewal that Certbot hasn't defined (yet).
To make use of this interface, the installer should implement
the interface methods, and interfaces.RenewDeployer.register(In-
stallerClass) should be called from the installer code.
abstract renew_deploy(lineage: RenewableCert, *args: Any,
**kwargs: Any) -> None
Perform updates defined by installer when a certificate
has been renewed
If an installer is a subclass of the class containing
this method, this function will always be called when a
certificate has been renewed by running "certbot renew".
For example if a plugin needs to copy a certificate over,
or change configuration based on the new certificate.
This method is called once for each lineage renewed
Parameters
lineage (RenewableCert) -- Certificate lineage ob-
ject
certbot.main module
Certbot main public entry point.
certbot.main.main(cli_args: Optional[List[str]] = None) -> Op-
tional[Union[str, int]]
Run Certbot.
Parameters
cli_args (list of str) -- command line to Certbot, de-
faults to sys.argv[1:]
Returns
value for sys.exit about the exit status of Certbot
Return type
str or int or None
certbot.ocsp package
Tools for checking certificate revocation.
class certbot.ocsp.RevocationChecker(enforce_openssl_binary_usage: bool
= False)
Bases: object
This class figures out OCSP checking on this system, and per-
forms it.
ocsp_revoked(cert: RenewableCert) -> bool
Get revoked status for a particular cert version.
Parameters
cert (interfaces.RenewableCert) -- Certificate ob-
ject
Returns
True if revoked; False if valid or the check
failed or cert is expired.
Return type
bool
ocsp_revoked_by_paths(cert_path: str, chain_path: str, timeout:
int = 10) -> bool
Performs the OCSP revocation check
Parameters
• cert_path (str) -- Certificate filepath
• chain_path (str) -- Certificate chain
• timeout (int) -- Timeout (in seconds) for the
OCSP query
Returns
True if revoked; False if valid or the check
failed or cert is expired.
Return type
bool
certbot.reverter module
Reverter class saves configuration checkpoints and allows for recovery.
class certbot.reverter.Reverter(config: NamespaceConfig)
Bases: object
Reverter Class - save and revert configuration checkpoints.
This class can be used by the plugins, especially Installers, to
undo changes made to the user's system. Modifications to files
and commands to do undo actions taken by the plugin should be
registered with this class before the action is taken.
Once a change has been registered with this class, there are
three states the change can be in. First, the change can be a
temporary change. This should be used for changes that will soon
be reverted, such as config changes for the purpose of solving a
challenge. Changes are added to this state through calls to
add_to_temp_checkpoint() and reverted when
revert_temporary_config() or recovery_routine() is called.
The second state a change can be in is in progress. These
changes are not temporary, however, they also have not been fi-
nalized in a checkpoint. A change must become in progress before
it can be finalized. Changes are added to this state through
calls to add_to_checkpoint() and reverted when
recovery_routine() is called.
The last state a change can be in is finalized in a checkpoint.
A change is put into this state by first becoming an in progress
change and then calling finalize_checkpoint(). Changes in this
state can be reverted through calls to rollback_checkpoints().
As a final note, creating new files and registering undo com-
mands are handled specially and use the methods
register_file_creation() and register_undo_command() respec-
tively. Both of these methods can be used to create either tem-
porary or in progress changes.
NOTE:
Consider moving everything over to CSV format.
Parameters
config (certbot.configuration.NamespaceConfig) -- Config-
uration.
revert_temporary_config() -> None
Reload users original configuration files after a tempo-
rary save.
This function should reinstall the users original config-
uration files for all saves with temporary=True
Raises .ReverterError -- when unable to revert config
rollback_checkpoints(rollback: int = 1) -> None
Revert 'rollback' number of configuration checkpoints.
Parameters
rollback (int) -- Number of checkpoints to re-
verse. A str num will be cast to an integer. So
"2" is also acceptable.
Raises .ReverterError -- if there is a problem with the
input or if the function is unable to correctly
revert the configuration checkpoints
add_to_temp_checkpoint(save_files: Set[str], save_notes: str) ->
None
Add files to temporary checkpoint.
Parameters
• save_files (set) -- set of filepaths to save
• save_notes (str) -- notes about changes during
the save
add_to_checkpoint(save_files: Set[str], save_notes: str) -> None
Add files to a permanent checkpoint.
Parameters
• save_files (set) -- set of filepaths to save
• save_notes (str) -- notes about changes during
the save
register_file_creation(temporary: bool, *files: str) -> None
Register the creation of all files during certbot execu-
tion.
Call this method before writing to the file to make sure
that the file will be cleaned up if the program exits un-
expectedly. (Before a save occurs)
Parameters
• temporary (bool) -- If the file creation reg-
istry is for a temp or permanent save.
• *files -- file paths (str) to be registered
Raises certbot.errors.ReverterError -- If call does not
contain necessary parameters or if the file cre-
ation is unable to be registered.
register_undo_command(temporary: bool, command: Iterable[str])
-> None
Register a command to be run to undo actions taken.
WARNING:
This function does not enforce order of operations in
terms of file modification vs. command registration.
All undo commands are run first before all normal
files are reverted to their previous state. If you
need to maintain strict order, you may create check-
points before and after the the command registration.
This function may be improved in the future based on
demand.
Parameters
• temporary (bool) -- Whether the command should
be saved in the IN_PROGRESS or TEMPORARY check-
points.
• command (list of str) -- Command to be run.
recovery_routine() -> None
Revert configuration to most recent finalized checkpoint.
Remove all changes (temporary and permanent) that have
not been finalized. This is useful to protect against
crashes and other execution interruptions.
Raises .errors.ReverterError -- If unable to recover the
configuration
finalize_checkpoint(title: str) -> None
Finalize the checkpoint.
Timestamps and permanently saves all changes made through
the use of add_to_checkpoint() and
register_file_creation()
Parameters
title (str) -- Title describing checkpoint
Raises certbot.errors.ReverterError -- when the check-
point is not able to be finalized.
certbot.util module
Utilities for all Certbot.
class certbot.util.Key(file, pem)
Bases: tuple
file Alias for field number 0
pem Alias for field number 1
class certbot.util.CSR(file, data, form)
Bases: tuple
data Alias for field number 1
file Alias for field number 0
form Alias for field number 2
certbot.util.env_no_snap_for_external_calls() -> Dict[str, str]
When Certbot is run inside a Snap, certain environment variables
are modified. But Certbot sometimes calls out to external pro-
grams, since it uses classic confinement. When we do that, we
must modify the env to remove our modifications so it will use
the system's libraries, since they may be incompatible with the
versions of libraries included in the Snap. For example,
apachectl, Nginx, and anything run from inside a hook should
call this function and pass the results into the env argument of
subprocess.Popen.
Returns
A modified copy of os.environ ready to pass to Popen
Return type
dict
certbot.util.run_script(params: ~typing.List[str], log: ~typ-
ing.Callable[[str], None] = <bound method Logger.error of <Logger cert-
bot.util (WARNING)>>) -> Tuple[str, str]
Run the script with the given params.
Parameters
• params (list) -- List of parameters to pass to subpro-
cess.run
• log (callable) -- Logger method to use for errors
certbot.util.exe_exists(exe: str) -> bool
Determine whether path/name refers to an executable.
Parameters
exe (str) -- Executable path or name
Returns
If exe is a valid executable
Return type
bool
certbot.util.lock_dir_until_exit(dir_path: str) -> None
Lock the directory at dir_path until program exit.
Parameters
dir_path (str) -- path to directory
Raises errors.LockError -- if the lock is held by another
process
certbot.util.set_up_core_dir(directory: str, mode: int, strict: bool)
-> None
Ensure directory exists with proper permissions and is locked.
Parameters
• directory (str) -- Path to a directory.
• mode (int) -- Directory mode.
• strict (bool) -- require directory to be owned by cur-
rent user
Raises
• .errors.LockError -- if the directory cannot be locked
• .errors.Error -- if the directory cannot be made or
verified
certbot.util.make_or_verify_dir(directory: str, mode: int = 493,
strict: bool = False) -> None
Make sure directory exists with proper permissions.
Parameters
• directory (str) -- Path to a directory.
• mode (int) -- Directory mode.
• strict (bool) -- require directory to be owned by cur-
rent user
Raises
• .errors.Error -- if a directory already exists, but has
wrong permissions or owner
• OSError -- if invalid or inaccessible file names and
paths, or other arguments that have the correct type,
but are not accepted by the operating system.
certbot.util.safe_open(path: str, mode: str = 'w', chmod: Optional[int]
= None) -> IO
Safely open a file.
Parameters
• path (str) -- Path to a file.
• mode (str) -- Same os mode for open.
• chmod (int) -- Same as mode for filesystem.open, uses
Python defaults if None.
certbot.util.unique_file(path: str, chmod: int = 511, mode: str = 'w')
-> Tuple[IO, str]
Safely finds a unique file.
Parameters
• path (str) -- path/filename.ext
• chmod (int) -- File mode
• mode (str) -- Open mode
Returns
tuple of file object and file name
certbot.util.unique_lineage_name(path: str, filename: str, chmod: int =
420, mode: str = 'w') -> Tuple[IO, str]
Safely finds a unique file using lineage convention.
Parameters
• path (str) -- directory path
• filename (str) -- proposed filename
• chmod (int) -- file mode
• mode (str) -- open mode
Returns
tuple of file object and file name (which may be modified
from the requested one by appending digits to ensure
uniqueness)
Raises OSError -- if writing files fails for an unanticipated
reason, such as a full disk or a lack of permission to
write to specified location.
certbot.util.safely_remove(path: str) -> None
Remove a file that may not exist.
certbot.util.get_filtered_names(all_names: Set[str]) -> Set[str]
Removes names that aren't considered valid by Let's Encrypt.
Parameters
all_names (set) -- all names found in the configuration
Returns
all found names that are considered valid by LE
Return type
set
certbot.util.get_os_info() -> Tuple[str, str]
Get OS name and version
Returns
(os_name, os_version)
Return type
tuple of str
certbot.util.get_os_info_ua() -> str
Get OS name and version string for User Agent
Returns
os_ua
Return type
str
certbot.util.get_systemd_os_like() -> List[str]
Get a list of strings that indicate the distribution likeness to
other distributions.
Returns
List of distribution acronyms
Return type
list of str
certbot.util.get_var_from_file(varname: str, filepath: str =
'/etc/os-release') -> str
Get single value from a file formatted like systemd /etc/os-re-
lease
Parameters
• varname (str) -- Name of variable to fetch
• filepath (str) -- File path of os-release file
Returns
requested value
Return type
str
certbot.util.get_python_os_info(pretty: bool = False) -> Tuple[str,
str]
Get Operating System type/distribution and major version using
python platform module
Parameters
pretty (bool) -- If the returned OS name should be in
longer (pretty) form
Returns
(os_name, os_version)
Return type
tuple of str
certbot.util.safe_email(email: str) -> bool
Scrub email address before using it.
class certbot.util.DeprecatedArgumentAction(option_strings, dest,
nargs=None, const=None, default=None, type=None, choices=None, re-
quired=False, help=None, metavar=None)
Bases: Action
Action to log a warning when an argument is used.
certbot.util.add_deprecated_argument(add_argument: Callable[[...],
None], argument_name: str, nargs: Union[str, int]) -> None
Adds a deprecated argument with the name argument_name.
Deprecated arguments are not shown in the help. If they are used
on the command line, a warning is shown stating that the argu-
ment is deprecated and no other action is taken.
Parameters
• add_argument (callable) -- Function that adds arguments
to an argument parser/group.
• argument_name (str) -- Name of deprecated argument.
• nargs -- Value for nargs when adding the argument to
argparse.
certbot.util.enforce_le_validity(domain: str) -> str
Checks that Let's Encrypt will consider domain to be valid.
Parameters
domain (str) -- FQDN to check
Returns
The domain cast to str, with ASCII-only contents
Return type
str
Raises ConfigurationError -- for invalid domains and cases where
Let's Encrypt currently will not issue certificates
certbot.util.enforce_domain_sanity(domain: Union[str, bytes]) -> str
Method which validates domain value and errors out if the re-
quirements are not met.
Parameters
domain (str or bytes) -- Domain to check
Raises ConfigurationError -- for invalid domains and cases where
Let's Encrypt currently will not issue certificates
Returns
The domain cast to str, with ASCII-only contents
Return type
str
certbot.util.is_ipaddress(address: str) -> bool
Is given address string form of IP(v4 or v6) address?
Parameters
address (str) -- address to check
Returns
True if address is valid IP address, otherwise return
False.
Return type
bool
certbot.util.is_wildcard_domain(domain: Union[str, bytes]) -> bool
"Is domain a wildcard domain?
Parameters
domain (bytes or str) -- domain to check
Returns
True if domain is a wildcard, otherwise, False
Return type
bool
certbot.util.is_staging(srv: str) -> bool
Determine whether a given ACME server is a known test / staging
server.
Parameters
srv (str) -- the URI for the ACME server
Returns
True iff srv is a known test / staging server
Rtype bool
certbot.util.atexit_register(func: Callable, *args: Any, **kwargs: Any)
-> None
Sets func to be called before the program exits.
Special care is taken to ensure func is only called when the
process that first imports this module exits rather than any
child processes.
Parameters
func (function) -- function to be called in case of an
error
certbot.util.parse_loose_version(version_string: str) ->
List[Union[int, str]]
Parses a version string into its components.
This code and the returned tuple is based on the now deprecated
distutils.version.LooseVersion class from the Python standard
library. Two LooseVersion classes and two lists as returned by
this function should compare in the same way. See
https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/v3.10.0/Lib/distutils/version.py#L205-L347.
Parameters
version_string (str) -- version string
Returns
list of parsed version string components
Return type
list
• Index
• Module Index
• Search Page
AUTHOR
Certbot
2.1 Apr 16, 2023 CERTBOT(7)
Generated by dwww version 1.15 on Tue Sep 2 20:56:02 CEST 2025.