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Comment by pfg | Hacker News Reader

As someone who occasionally helps people with their web server/TLS/Let's Encrypt configuration, my experience is that there is a world of difference between a web server merely giving you the tools you'd need for a (relatively) sane OCSP and auto-renewal configuration, and one that takes care of everything. You should not need the amount of specialized knowledge you currently need to correctly configure OCSP on HAProxy or nginx, for example.

Failure to renew a certificate (for any number of reasons) and missing intermediate certificates are the most common issues, and both of these are essentially solved with a web server that supports ACME natively. The same applies to OCSP stapling - we're not going to achieve ubiquitous stapling support on the server side if every server admin needs to deploy a bash script calling to openssl because the native OCSP implementation in their web server is broken.

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There is literally zero configuration required for HAProxy. You just store .ocsp files alongside the .pem's

Yes you need to fetch them regularly. I use the aforementioned shell script to do this.

Why do you people keep up this weird narrative that only caddy renews certificates automatically?

The native ocsp handling in HAProxy isn't broken: it just expects to have TLS material provided to it.

If someone setting up HAProxy on a server can't install a shell script calling two OpenSSL commands and setup cron to call it regularly, I don't think your big problem is "HAProxy doesn't handle ocsp". It's PEBKAC.

> There is literally zero configuration required for HAProxy. You just store .ocsp files alongside the .pem's

> Yes you need to fetch them regularly. I use the aforementioned shell script to do this.

It does sound like there's some configuration involved after all, namely the configuration of a cronjob, and perhaps adjustments to a bash script. This is something that the majority of server operators will not bother with, though these numbers might look slightly better for HAProxy since that's generally something you see used by more experienced sysadmins. Even with nginx, we're talking about one line of configuration for the actual stapling file - that's not the blocker, it should just work, by default. Fun fact: IIS does this.

> Why do you people keep up this weird narrative that only caddy renews certificates automatically?

I'm not sure who "you people" are, and I never made any such claim. What I'm saying is that web servers that support ACME natively leave a lot less room for the types of misconfigurations that I commonly see. I'm aware of an ACME module for apache and lua scripts for nginx which provide similar features (regarding renewal and certificates, not for the OCSP aspect), but they're not part of what you run by default when you use those web servers.

> The native ocsp handling in HAProxy isn't broken: it just expects to have TLS material provided to it.

I have yet to see you explain why this should be necessary. The web server has all the information it needs to do this. Other web servers can do this.

> If someone setting up HAProxy on a server can't install a shell script calling two OpenSSL commands and setup cron to call it regularly, I don't think your big problem is "HAProxy doesn't handle ocsp". It's PEBKAC.

This is like arguing MongoDB should continue to bind to all interfaces by default because everyone should have firewalls in place. Yes, they should, but it's never going to happen, so why can't we just have a safe default?

> It does sound like there's some configuration involved after all

How is "schedule a script to run @daily" or whatever schedule you want, at all match up to what you suggested is required:

>> You should not need the amount of specialized knowledge you currently need to correctly configure OCSP on HAProxy or nginx, for example.

If you're configuring a public facing server, a cronjob should not be considered "specialised knowledge".

> it should just work, by default

HAProxy and nginx do a fucking shit ton more than Caddy does. HAProxy doesn't really have a "default" you have to tell it what you want to do, specifically. This is a good thing.

> I'm not sure who "you people" are, and I never made any such claim.

>> By doing renewals automatically, Caddy's HTTPS implementation is more reliable and robust than doing it manually.

>> Failure to renew a certificate (for any number of reasons) and missing intermediate certificates are the most common issues,

You're both giving the impression that Caddy is able to automatically renew certificates, while no other software does this.

> I have yet to see you explain why this should be necessary.

Off the top of my head:

- Separation of concerns. I don't ask my mechanic to build me a car, or to drive me to the shops in it.

- Not every organisation uses LetsEncrypt certificates. Some will even use self-signed certificates.

- TCP or DNS load-balanced environments will want the exact same certificate & key on multiple servers.

- Caddy has already shown that trusting some "automagic" solution can bite you in the ass. Remember that time Caddy wouldn't even start, even though it had perfectly valid certificate material in it's cache, because LE was down?

> The web server has all the information it needs to do this.

HAProxy doesn't know the email address I'd want LetsEncrypt to use for notifications. It also shouldn't be agreeing to LE's terms on my behalf.

> This is like arguing MongoDB should continue to bind to all interfaces by default because everyone should have firewalls in place.

No, it isn't.

I'm sorry but you simply don't get the choice of arguing anything about how creating a fucking cronjob is "too hard" when Caddy doesn't even ship with a configuration to start as a service.

"I know I just had to google the shit out of how to create a systemd unit, but fuck it, it's better than writing a damned cron job for oscp staples!"

> If you're configuring a public facing server, a cronjob should not be considered "specialised knowledge".

Knowing how HAProxy's OCSP implementation works (i.e., by looking for a $cert.ocsp file) is the specialized knowledge. Odds are, you don't know about it and just won't use OCSP stapling. This is especially true since every web server does this differently.

> HAProxy and nginx do a fucking shit ton more than Caddy does. HAProxy doesn't really have a "default" you have to tell it what you want to do, specifically. This is a good thing.

I'm not arguing that it doesn't do a lot of things Caddy doesn't. I'm arguing for sane defaults. If I tell HAProxy to enable TLS and provide a certificate that contains an OCSP AIA extension, a sane default would be to use that information to manage OCSP stapling.

> You're both giving the impression that Caddy is able to automatically renew certificates, while no other software does this.

You're leaving out the part where I say these issues "[...] are essentially solved with a web server that supports ACME natively". I'm not referring to Caddy specifically. The web server doing this natively is far less error-prone. I have also mentioned alternatives.

> - Separation of concerns. I don't ask my mechanic to build me a car, or to drive me to the shops in it.

Where do you draw the line? Most deployments let their web servers handle TLS. OCSP stapling should be part of a modern TLS deployment. You could similarly argue that using HAProxy for TLS is wrong (and that you should rather put pound or stunnel in front of it).

> - Not every organisation uses LetsEncrypt certificates. Some will even use self-signed certificates.

That's fine; you can continue to manually configure certificates, even with Caddy, and I'm definitely not arguing that this option should be removed. ACME is also an open standard, so switching to other CAs can be as simple as configuring a different ACME server url.

> - TCP or DNS load-balanced environments will want the exact same certificate & key on multiple servers.

That's why you can replace the certificate and key storage in more complex environments[1].

> - Caddy has already shown that trusting some "automagic" solution can bite you in the ass. Remember that time Caddy wouldn't even start, even though it had perfectly valid certificate material in it's cache, because LE was down?

Software can break, what a surprise. You could similarly have a broken OCSP updater script that puts empty or expired OCSP responses in your stapling file because the check is missing or incomplete and break the site for your visitors. Or your ACME client could fail on renewal because of a backend change on Let's Encrypt's end that exposes a bug in it[2].

> HAProxy doesn't know the email address I'd want LetsEncrypt to use for notifications. It also shouldn't be agreeing to LE's terms on my behalf.

You can ... provide your email address? You keep arguing that this stuff is easy, surely adding a single line with your email address won't break the camel's back. Accepting the TOS can be solved as part of the installation or configuration process, much like ACME clients do it.

Anyway, you seem to be having some kind of problem with Caddy. I'm not interested in that discussion (which is to say I'm not interested in discussing this further, I think I've made my point) - my goal is to improve the user experience of server admins when they enable HTTPS, and I have no doubt that native ACME support and automated OCSP management, both with sane defaults, would both help HTTPS adoption and improve the quality of the TLS configuration of your average web server.

[1]: https://godoc.org/github.com/mholt/caddy/caddytls#Storage

[2]: https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/acme-sh-standalone-fails...

My issue is with caddy.

FYI, the issue a few months back wasn't "software breaks".

It worked exactly as they designed and implemented it. The original issue was closed, before (as seems to be a pattern lately) they changed direction when they received so much negative feedback about their highly opinionated choices for the project.

To this day the same logic is still in caddy, but with a longer grace period. Try starting caddy offline with a cert that expires in less than 7 days.

I don't trust someone to develop a server if they think failing to start at all, is better than starting with close to expired or even expired certificates.

It's called the Ostrich Solution. You stick your head in the sand to ignore alternatives to buttress the argument that your solution is the sole solution to a problem. You then hope that no one does even the most rudimentary investigation, which is, unfortunately, getting more and more prevalent nowadays.

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