| 4 Jul 2025 |
 Theuni | *
- the assurance: the files referenced in your config file are now available and are (syntactically) valid ssl certificates. Go forth and start!
| 06:39:57 |
| Theuni | That inversion makes the dependencies muddied again. I could split it up in more units, moving the post-processing code in a separate unit, or just use a shared (execstartpost) script (or partial). | 06:42:16 |
| Theuni | Hmm. Consolidating multiple certificates renewing at the same time isn't much of an issue I guess as we distribute the renewal timers over time anyway. | 06:43:05 |
| Theuni | * Hmm. Consolidating client reload signals for multiple certificates renewing at the same time isn't much of an issue I guess as we distribute the renewal timers over time anyway. | 06:43:18 |
| Theuni | So. I guess two units would suffice: 1st unit (acme-${cert}) is what clients depend via want/after on, which guarantees a syntactically valid certificate is there - which updates the certificate parameters when the config changes. Interestingly, the last part isn't really needed for the assurance itself. 2nd unit to issue ACME renewals. | 06:46:40 |
| Theuni | I wonder whether the "update the parameters" (which requires an active unit to trigger selectively) could/should move elsewhere. It can't be merged with the 2nd unit because that conflicts with the timer requirement. | 06:47:22 |
| Theuni | The renewal itself does depend on the order being current/successful, though as hexa noted. | 06:48:05 |
| Theuni | 
Download Screenshot 2025-07-04 at 10.12.07.png | 08:12:46 |
| Theuni | Alright. Some discussion with leona and max lead to this ^^ | 08:12:49 |
| Theuni | I'll put that into code and see how that works. | 08:13:00 |
| Theuni | something that doesn't fit in there is that preliminary self signed certificates can be turned off currently. | 08:22:52 |
| Theuni | this setup would always introduce (temporary) self-signed certificates. (currently if you turn off preliminary self signed certificates and lets encrypt doesn't work for some reason, we don't start the consumer service at all because the configs will be invalid) | 08:23:50 |
| Theuni | i would consider it an acceptable shift in detail wrt to reduced overall complexity. | 08:24:40 |
| Theuni | * i would consider it an acceptable tradeoff with the benefit of reduced complexity. | 08:25:11 |
| Theuni | otoh if someone runs dns-01 everywhere and doesn't ever need to show self signed certificates and wants to reduce the risk of exposing users to those ... | 08:26:12 |
| Theuni | hmpf. | 08:26:15 |
| Theuni | however, if you have a more complex service that acts as a "nexus" then maybe only one of multiple vhosts uses dns-01, others might be using http-01 or tls-01 and need the self-signed certificates anyway and then you get unpredictable behaviour. | 08:29:06 |
| Theuni | in that sense, the tradeoff seems even more beneficial: reduced complexity and more predictable behaviour. | 08:29:26 |
| Theuni | we originally added it as an option when creating self-signed certificates wasn't supported yet, so ... i guess it was created as an option ... because we can? | 08:30:28 |
| Theuni | i'll turn into coding mode now and see how this works out. | 08:30:38 |
|  leona joined the room. | 08:31:15 |
| Theuni | 👋 | 08:31:20 |
|  ma27 joined the room. | 08:31:24 |
 emily | I say this every time our ACME module fails to scale for someone, but ACME issuance really wants to be a proper service rather than scripted out of systemd bits and you might want to consider trying something like Caddy for an issuance daemon :) | 09:42:56 |
| emily | (not that I don't welcome improvements especially if they simplify the code) | 09:43:10 |
| Theuni | yeah, our stack is already interesting, so i'd rather not use caddy (and we have non-http requirements anyway) and the overall integration is quite nice - it's a lot more advanced than what others have, so ... yeah. I was considering replacing the scripted stuff but it's not obvious to be better as a replacement when trying to start from the ground up ... 🙂 | 10:00:53 |
| Theuni | i started this week with the assumption of "lets make it a proper service" but then the dependency management around it for consumers is quite complex anyway and this means doing stuff in "systemd land" isn't going away either ... | 10:01:33 |
| Theuni | so, at the moment: this makes me understand the code base much better and maybe we can turn it into a proper service at another point in time. lego as the client is quite valuable, so traefik would be an option, but then it gets in the way with other http stuff or needs more layering) | 10:02:35 |
| emily | to be clear, you can use Caddy as an "issue TLS certs to files" daemon, for HTTP-01, TLS-ALPN-01, and DNS-01 | 10:21:59 |
| emily | without any HTTP server component (beyond serving .well-known/acme-challenge if you use HTTP-01) | 10:22:10 |
