acme.sh VS dehydrated-bigip-ansible

Next, we will install acme.sh, a command-line tool for managing SSL/TLS certificates. I prefer acme.sh over certbot, as it does not depend on the OS version. For more details about acme.sh, check its GitHub repo here.

A very relevant question. Acme.sh, a similar shell script ACME client, had a remote code execution problem last year.

https://github.com/acmesh-official/acme.sh/issues/4668

As a result, any certificates issued (or renewed) after Feb 8th will not work on older Android devices (< 7.1.1), unless the ACME client has been configure to request an alternate certificate chain. The "alternate chain" workaround will also stop working on June 6th.

I need to support these older Android devices so I am looking for alternatives. I have seen ZeroSSL mentioned a few times; it is also the default CA for acme.sh (the ACME client I am using nowadays) [2]. They have a number of paid plans but ACME certificates are free [3].

I'll be testing this over the next few days, but I would also like to ask if people here have experience with ZeroSSL (good or bad :-). Any feedback would be helpful.

[1]: https://letsencrypt.org/2023/07/10/cross-sign-expiration.html

[2]: https://github.com/acmesh-official/acme.sh

[3]: https://zerossl.com/documentation/acme/

Huh, the environment variable thing was specifically aimed at acme.sh which rather arbitrarily changed the config value from ACMEDNS_UPDATE_URL to ACMEDNS_BASE_URL, never acknowledged this in a changelog and then silently failed after an automatic upgrade as recommended by the default install:

https://github.com/acmesh-official/acme.sh/commit/2ce145f359...

It's also cleared out my .account.conf files when run on the suggested cron.

I've started using updown which also monitors my TLS certs simply because I no longer trust the process to work as documented.

It depends on your provider though. I can tell from experience that with OVH and their API, it's been easy to set up the automatic renewal via DNS verification. Apparently, the official client has support for the DNS API of 159 providers: https://github.com/acmesh-official/acme.sh/wiki/dnsapi

For the few people here that happen to run a self-hosted email server with acme.sh for TLS key/cert generation and Cloudflare for DNS management, I have made a tool that i personally use to get a perfect 100% score on Internet.nl's email test.

All of this is to say it's a decent amount of work to save the hassle of deploying certbot or acme.sh on the remote machines, pick your poison.

Here is a really solid guide for setting up the ACME DNS challenge with pretty much any DNS provider

People wonder why I like using the shell-based ACME client like dehydrated (or acme.sh):

* https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=dehydrated

* https://github.com/acmesh-official/acme.sh

Versus the official client certbot:

* https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=python3-certbot

A kludgy as very long shell scripts are (thought to be), I have a better chance of being able to go through all the code and understand it than a dozen(+) Python libraries.

So today I figured out how to install acme.sh to my hosted server space for my websites, and used acme to issue an SSL certificate and install it for a domain. It uses LetsEncrypt, and ZeroSSL for the default Certificate Authority (CA). Then I notice that ZeroSSL only allows a free 90 day certificate, and only 3 of those before you have to pay. Is there any way to generate actual free SSL certificates that do not expire for a year or more and that can be renewed free? I have heard that most hosting plans now provide free SSL certs, so is my hosting company just providing cheap hosting but making money on the backend by charging for SSL certs?

> I'm using the acme.sh client but the process will be similar no matter which client you choose to use.

Always nice to see some variety in clients along side the official Let's Encrypt one.

While we do use the official Python-based client at works at times, whenever I install it via apt, and it pulls in a whole bunch of dependencies, it's a bit disconcerting to me.

I'm a bit partial to dehydrated, which is a shell script (works under Bash and Zsh): I find it a lot easier to understand. It's handy to put on Linux/POSIX-based appliances like F5s, where the only prerequisites are Bash, cURL, and OpenSSL (and standard Unix tools like sed, grep, etc):

* https://devcentral.f5.com/s/articles/lets-encrypt-on-a-big-i...

* https://github.com/EquateTechnologies/dehydrated-bigip-ansib...