An interactive shell designed for RFC 8555 ACME client/server developers to use for tests, day to day tasks, and exploring the protocol. ACMEShell Supports both interactive and non-interactive usage.

• Warnings
• Quick-start
• Features
• The ACME Playset
• Command Line Flags
• Usage Help
  • Server Options
  • Account Management
  • Key Management
  • Workflow
• Tips and Tricks
• TODO

ACMEShell is not a shell script based ACME client, it's a shell environment for ACME. If you're looking for a shell script ACME client you should try acme.sh instead.

ACMEShell is designed for developers - not server administrators. Do not use ACMEShell to issue or renew production certificates. Do not write automation around ACMEShell to manage real certificates and keypairs! Instead, use a real ACME client (like Certbot) or a production grade library (like Lego).

ACMEShell was coded in short bursts of infrequent free time. The code quality is poor in some areas. Cleanup pull requests are welcome. If something seems strange it's probably because I threw it together in a rush while trying to make progress on my real task (likely debugging Boulder).

1. Pick an ACMEShell release and download the .tar.gz archive for your architecture (for example Linux_x86_64.tar.gz):

   wget https://github.com/cpu/acmeshell/releases/download/v0.0.2/acmeshell_0.0.2_Linux_x86_64.tar.gz
   

2. Extract the archive and change into the extracted directory:

   tar xf acmeshell_*.tar.gz
   cd acmeshell*
   

3. Make the acmeshell program executable:

   chmod +x acmeshell
   

4. Run the acmeshell program:

   ./acmeshell
   

That's it! You should find yourself in an ACMEShell session with the Let's Encrypt "ACME v2" staging environment ACME server. A new ACME account will have automatically been created for your session and saved in the current directory as acmeshell.account.json. You're ready to go!

• Convenient interactive shell supporting auto-completion of commands and menu selection of ACME objects/URLs.
• Non-interactive usage suitable for scripts and automated tests.
• High level commands like newOrder, getAuthz, and solve for interacting with an ACME server quickly and easily.
• Low level commands like sign, post, and get to have fine-grain control over protocol messages to exercise new features or reproduce corner-case bugs.
• Supports logging all HTTP requests/responses, JWS objects, and to-be-signed JSON messages to give full protocol visibility.
• Utility functions for generating CSRs and working with Base64URL encoded data.
• Powerful templating support for convenient manual construction of authenticated protocol messages.
• Create, save/load and switch between many ACME accounts in one session.
• Create, save/load, and use named private keys for ACME messages (CSRs, key rollovers, etc).
• Built-in challenge server for returning HTTP-01 and TLS-ALPN-01 challenge responses (also supports using an external pebble-challtestsrv).
• Built-in mock DNS server for DNS-01 challenges and directing HTTP-01/TLS-ALPN-01 requests to the built-in challenge server.

If you would like to experiment with an end-to-end ACME environment where you can fake DNS entries and issue untrusted test certificates for domains you don't control ACMEShell integrates out of the box with Pebble.

To get started install Docker and Docker Compose and then run the following command in the acmeshell repo:

   docker-compose up

This will start a pebble container configured to use a second pebble-challtestsrv container for DNS.

To connect ACMEShell to the Pebble container and use the pebble-challtestsrv container for challenge responses run:

   acmeshell -pebble

Usage of acmeshell:
  -account string
    	Optional JSON filepath to use to save/restore auto-registered ACME account (default "acmeshell.account.json")
  -autoregister
    	Create an ACME account automatically at startup if required (default true)
  -ca string
    	CA certificate(s) for verifying ACME server HTTPS
  -challsrv string
    	Optional API address for an external pebble-challtestsrv instance to use
  -contact string
    	Optional contact email address for auto-registered ACME account
  -directory string
    	Directory URL for ACME server (default "https://acme-staging-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory")
  -dnsPort int
    	DNS-01 challenge server port for internal challtestsrv (default 5252)
  -httpPort int
    	HTTP-01 challenge server port for internal challtestsrv (default 5002)
  -in string
    	Read commands from the specified file instead of stdin
  -pebble
    	Use Pebble defaults
  -postAsGet
    	Use POST-as-GET requests instead of GET requests in high level commands (default true)
  -printJWS
    	Print all JWS in serialized form to stdout
  -printNonces
    	Print all nonce updates and HEAD requests
  -printRequests
    	Print all HTTP requests to stdout
  -printResponses
    	Print all HTTP responses to stdout
  -printSignedData
    	Print request data to stdout before signing
  -tlsPort int
    	TLS-ALPN-01 challenge server port for internal challtestsrv (default 5001)

The most important option is -directory command line flag. If none is provided ACMEShell will use the Let's Encrypt ACME v2 staging environment server directory address.

Many test ACME servers (Pebble included) serve their API over an HTTPS address with a certificate that isn't signed by a root in the system's trusted CA store. You can specify a custom root CA certificate to use to validate the ACME server's HTTPS certificate with the -ca flag.

If you specify -pebble then ACMEShell assumes Pebble defaults. The -directory address will be https://localhost:14000/dir to match the Pebble default and the -ca flag will be configured with the default Pebble HTTPS CA. The ACMEShell will also be configured to use the default pebble-challtestsrv address http://localhost:8055 as the -challSrv argument.

By default ACMEShell's high level commands use POST-AS-GET requests to fetch resources for RFC 8555 compliance.

If you want higher level commands to use unauthenticated GET requests like earlier pre-RFC 8555 drafts of ACME provide -postAsGet=false . Note that when using Pebble this will cause many commands to fail because Pebble will reject unauthenticated GET requests.

ACMEShell supports multiple ACME accounts. One account is considered "active" at a time and is used by the higher level commands.

By default without changing any command line flags acmeshell will try to load an active ACME account at startup from acmeshell.account.json in the current directory.

If that file doesn't exist, ACMEShell will create a new account with the ACME server and save it to acmeshell.account.json to load the next time acmeshell starts. If you would prefer ACMEShell exit if an existing acmeshell.account.json account doesn't exist rather than creating it provide -autoregister=false.

If you want ACMEShell to startup without loading or creating an account you can specify both -autoregister=false and -account="". Afterwards ACMEShell will start with no active account and many commands will not work until one is created and switched to with newAccount.

By default no contact address is provided when automatically creating an account at startup. Use [email protected] to set a contact address when creating an auto-registered account. Providing multiple contact addresses is not supported for the automatically registered account. If you require specifying multiple contacts use the newAccount command.

To create new accounts above and beyond the autoregistered account use the newAccount command.

Usage of newAccount:
  -contacts string
    	Comma separated list of contact emails
  -json string
    	Optional filepath to a JSON save file for the account
  -keyID string
    	Key ID for existing key (empty to generate new key)
  -switch
    	Switch to the new account after creating it (default true)

For example to create and switch to a new ACME account with two contact addresses that will be persisted to /tmp/foo.bar.account.json run:

   newAccount [email protected],[email protected] \
      -json=/tmp/foo.bar.account.json \

If you wanted to create the account but not switch to it, add -switch=false.

You can list the available accounts with the accounts command:

Usage of accounts:
  -showContact
    	Print ACME account contact info (default true)
  -showID
    	Print ACME account IDs (default true)

You can switch the active account with the switchAccount command:

Usage of switchAccount:
  -account int
    	account number to switch to. leave blank to pick interactively (default -1)

The -account index corresponds to the output from accounts.

After creating newOrder's it can be useful to save the active account's state to the -json file that was provided when it was created with newAccount (or the -account file that it was loaded from by acmeshell). To do so use the saveAccount command.

Usage of saveAccount:
  -json string
    	Filepath to a JSON save file for the account. If empty the -account argument is used

To load an account from JSON that isn't present in the accounts output (e.g. because it was perhaps created in a different session) use the loadAccount command:

Usage of loadAccount:
  -switch
    	Switch to the account after loading it (default true)

ACMEShell supports managing multiple private keys and giving them human identifiable labels to make it easy to use them with other ACME commands/messages.

By default all accounts that are created by ACMEShell get an account private key automatically created for them with a label equal to account ID the server gave the account when it was registered.

For example if my -autoregister account was given the ID "https://localhost:14000/my-account/1" by the ACME server then ACMEShell will have given the account private key that was randomly generated when registering the account a matching label: "https://localhost:14000/my-account/1".

Some commands (e.g. finalize, csr) will automatically generate random private keys as required. If you need to control the private key that is used you can create private keys with the newKey command reference them by ID in other commands.

Use the newKey command to create a new private key:

Usage of newKey:
  -id string
    	ID for the new key
  -jwk
    	Print JWK output (default true)
  -path string
    	Path to write PEM private key to
  -pem
    	Print PEM output
  -type string
    	Type of key to generate rsa or ecdsa (default "ecdsa")

Use the viewKey command to display key information like the publickey in JWK form or the public key JWK thumbprint. It can also be used to export the private key out of ACMEShell to a PEM file on disk using the -path argument.

Usage of viewKey:
  -b64thumbprint
    	Display JWK public key thumbprint in base64url encoded form (default true)
  -hexthumbprint
    	Display JWK public key thumbprint in hex encoded form
  -jwk
    	Display public key in JWK format (default true)
  -path string
    	Path to write PEM private key to
  -pem
    	Display private key in PEM format

Load an existing private key from a file containing a PEM encoded ECDSA private key using the loadKey command. The -id argument is used to choose the key ID:

Usage of loadKey:
  -id string
    	ID for the key

The high level commands let you quickly perform ACME operations without having to manually construct any messages. Most of these commands support two methods of use:

• if not enough arguments are provided they can be used interactively, letting you choose objects from a menu.
• if enough arguments are provided to unambiguously perform the operation it will be done non-interactively

While these commands are "high level" they are still lower level than what most existing ACME clients expose and allow a great deal of control over the issuance process.

Each order created with the newOrder command is assigned an order index to make it easy to reference in other commands. The first order will be index 0, the second 1, and so on. These indexes are account specific. If you change the active account with switchAccount the order indexes will change to be based on the orders that the new account has created.

While not a complete list (see "help") the most common high-level commands are:

• newAccount - create an account with the server.
• getAccount - fetch the active account's details from the server.
• rollover - change the active account's key to a new key.
• newOrder - create an order resource.
• getOrder - fetch an order resource.
• getAuthz - fetch an authorization resource.
• getChall - fetch a challenge resource.
• solve - solve a challenge associated with an authz from an order.
• poll - poll a resource until it's in a specific state.
• finalize - finalize an order by POSTing a CSR.
• getCert - get an order's certificate resource.
• revokeCert - revoke a certificate resource.
• deactivateAuthz - deactivate an authorization.
• deactivateAccount - deactivate an account.

Here's an example of using the high level commands non-interactively to complete an order issuance:

   newOrder -identifiers=threeletter.agency
   getOrder -order=0
   getAuthz -order=0 -identifier=threeletter.agency
   getChall -order=0 -identifier=threeletter.agency -type=http-01
   solve -order=0 -identifier=threeletter.agency -challengeType=http-01
   poll -order=0
   finalize -order=0
   poll -order=0 -status=valid
   getCert -order=0
   revokeCert -order=0

Note that while the high level commands to fetch resource information have "get" in their names POST-as-GET requests will be used internally unless ACMEShell was started with -postAsGet=false.

While not a complete list (see "help") the most common low-level commands are:

• sign - create a JWS for a provided message with the active account key or another ACMEShell key.
• keyAuth - create a key authorization for a selected challenge token with a specified ACME account key thumbprint.
• jwsDecode - Decode a JSON JWS and its BASE64URL encoded fields.
• b64url - BASE64URL encoding/decode data.
• post - make an HTTP POST with an arbitrary payload to an arbitrary URL. By default the data is signed with the active account key. Supports POST-as-GET with -noData flag.
• get - make an HTTP GET request for an arbitrary URL. E.g. a terms of service URL.
• csr - create a CSR for specified names or for the identifiers in a specified order with a specific key or an autogenerated one.
• challSrv - add/remove challenge responses with the built-in challenge server or the external -challsrv provided on the command line.

Many of the low level commands let you template values based on ACMEShell objects. Templating makes it possible to easily refer to data from ACME resources created during a session from within other requests. The syntax is a little bit clunky but the results are powerful. There are several templating functions and variables available:

• account - a variable for the current account ID.
• order <order index> - a function that returns the order with the given index.
• authz <order> <identifier> - a function that returns the authorization from the given order for the given identifier.
• chal <authz> <type> - a function that returns the challenge of the given type from the given authorization.
• key <id> - a function that returns the ACMEShell private key with the given ID.
• csr <order> <key> - a function that returns a BASE64URL encoded CSR created for the identifiers from the given order and signed with the given private key.

Here's an example that shows how templating can be used with some of the low level commands:

   echo See the active account's JWK
   viewKey {{ account }}

   echo Change the active account contact info
   post -body='{"contact":["mailto:[email protected]"]}' {{ account }}

   echo POST-as-GET the first order by URL
   post -noData {{ (order 0) }}

   echo POST-as-GET some authz details
   post -noData {{ (authz (order 0) \"example.com\") }}

   echo POST-as-GET some challenge details
   post -noData {{ (chal (authz (order 0) \"example.com\") \"tls-alpn-01\") }}

   echo POST a CSR to the first order finalize URL
   post -body='{"csr":"{{ (csr (order 0) (key "example.key")) }}"}' {{ (order 0).Finalize }}

See test/ci.script.txt for a complete non-interactive demo using templating.

ACMEShell supports some handy tricks that may be useful to you:

• Input lines starting with a # character are ignored by ACMEShell and can be used to comment output or scripts.

• ACMEShell supports many "readline" shortcuts. (E.g. CTRL-A to go to the beginning of the line, CTRL-L to clear the screen).

• ACMEShell can read non-interactive input from STDIN, or from a file using the -in argument. This is useful to run acmeshell in the delve debugger where stdin is used for debugger control:

   dlv debug github.com/cpu/acmeshell/cmd/acmeshell -- -pebble -in docs/example.script.txt
  

• RFC 8555 subproblem support
• support for exiting on a command failure (e.g. for integration tests).
• so much cleanup...
• some unit tests would be swell.
• better docs.
• polish - checking for consistency between commands (e.g. -type vs -challengeType).