Setup Let’s encrypt TLS certificate for Proxmox [Update]

February 21, 2016

The graphical interface of Proxmox runs on port 8006 and uses HTTPS. By default this is a self signed certificate, which is a problem if you login in from a client the first time. In this case you’re not sure if there is no MitM attack going on. But there is a solution for this by using Let’s encrypt.

First you need to install git

apt-get install git

download the client software

cd /root
git clone https://github.com/letsencrypt/letsencrypt

and now you need to “patch” it as with running containers the check for a free port 80 most likely fails as a container with a running a web server is quite common. Open this file /root/letsencrypt/letsencrypt/plugins/util.py with an editor and place

return False

as first command in the already_listening method. Make sure that it is aligned with the line above and below as Python requires that. It should look this:

letsencrypt

ps: If you started to read this article after calling ./letsencrypt-auto the first time you also need to patch following file the same way.

/root/.local/share/letsencrypt/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/letsencrypt/plugins/util.py

[Update] In the newer version the client is called certbot and so the path got changed to

/root/.local/share/letsencrypt/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/certbot/plugins/util.py

[/Update]

Now make sure that Port 80 is not firewalled and therefore reachable from the Internet and call following command:

cd /root/letsencrypt/
./letsencrypt-auto certonly --standalone --standalone-supported-challenges http-01 -d <dnsname>

Replace with the <dnsname> with the dns name you use to connect to the management Web GUI. If all worked, you should see following:

IMPORTANT NOTES:
- Congratulations! Your certificate and chain have been saved at
/etc/letsencrypt/live//fullchain.pem. Your cert
will expire on 2016-05-21. To obtain a new version of the
certificate in the future, simply run Let's Encrypt again.
- If you like Let's Encrypt, please consider supporting our work by:
....

Now only saving the old certificate with these commands …

mv /etc/pve/pve-root-ca.pem /etc/pve/pve-root-ca.pem.orig
mv /etc/pve/local/pve-ssl.key /etc/pve/local/pve-ssl.key.orig
mv /etc/pve/local/pve-ssl.pem /etc/pve/local/pve-ssl.pem.orig

and copying the new ones to the correct place …

cp /etc/letsencrypt/live/<hostname>/chain.pem /etc/pve/pve-root-ca.pem
cp /etc/letsencrypt/live/<hostname>/privkey.pem /etc/pve/local/pve-ssl.key
cp /etc/letsencrypt/live/<hostname>/cert.pem /etc/pve/local/pve-ssl.pem

followed by a restart of the processes:

service pveproxy restart
service pvedaemon restart

is open.

The last 5 commands are needed, because the special file system Proxmox uses for /etc/pve does not support symlinks. You need to execute that 5 commands after each renewal. The option for this is “renew”. You can/should automate the renew process.

9 Comments »

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  1. Thanks for this, it worked perfectly.

    You have an issue though – in the cp /etc/let… lines you have your own domain name blackstar.penz.name rather than a note to change the details to the end user’s domain name.

    Best regards
    Greg

    Comment by Greg Fenton — March 15, 2016 #

  2. As a follow on, I use this as my cron job to renew the certificate automatically every 3 months:
    0 0 1 JAN,APR,JUL,OCT * cd /root/letsencrypt; ./letsencrypt-auto renew --agree-tos [email protected]

    Comment by Greg Fenton — March 15, 2016 #

  3. thx, changed that.

    Comment by robert — March 16, 2016 #

  4. GReat !

    thx

    Comment by Henri — May 21, 2016 #

  5. Hey! I have a problem…
    View this:

    WARNING: unable to check for updates.
    Creating virtual environment…
    Installing Python packages…
    Traceback (most recent call last):
    File “/tmp/tmp.1FK3d4Wlgo/pipstrap.py”, line 146, in
    exit(main())
    File “/tmp/tmp.1FK3d4Wlgo/pipstrap.py”, line 130, in main
    for url, digest in PACKAGES]
    File “/tmp/tmp.1FK3d4Wlgo/pipstrap.py”, line 112, in hashed_download
    response = opener().open(url)
    File “/usr/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py”, line 431, in open
    response = self._open(req, data)
    File “/usr/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py”, line 449, in _open
    ‘_open’, req)
    File “/usr/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py”, line 409, in _call_chain
    result = func(*args)
    File “/usr/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py”, line 1240, in https_open
    context=self._context)
    File “/usr/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py”, line 1197, in do_open
    raise URLError(err)
    urllib2.URLError:
    root@pvenefitel:~/letsencrypt#

    I do not understand the error, except it comes from python. Any idea how to set this problem?
    Thanks!

    Comment by Paul — September 11, 2016 #

  6. urllib2 is a library for downloading stuff, so I seems to be fair to guess that something at downloading did not work. Are you using a http proxy, blocking access to internet on that server or something that changes the traffic? An other possibility is that there is a temporary problem with the let’s encrypt server.

    Comment by robert — September 11, 2016 #

  7. I do not use a proxy, but I’m on my ADSL (personal connection).
    What ports to open? TCP? UDP?

    Thanks!

    Comment by Paul — September 11, 2016 #

  8. don’t know .. just look with tcpdump if a connection is attempted and not working.

    Comment by robert — September 11, 2016 #

  9. I’m looking at, and it is possible that it comes to IPv6

    Comment by Paul — September 11, 2016 #

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