[Freeipa-devel] certmonger everywhere

[Rob Crittenden]

Jan Cholasta wrote:
> On 16.12.2015 01:40, Fraser Tweedale wrote:
> 
> I'm not proposing to change cert-request to a client side command - I'm
> proposing to change the way cert-request is handled *on the server*.
> This way we can keep all the configuration on the server and make
> changes to it without having to reconfigure all clients.
> 
> This is how I envision the workflow:
> 
>  1. client requests a certificate with "getcert request", using "IPA" as
> the CA and, optionally, a string identifying the sub-CA (for the lack of
> better term)
> 
>  2. "getcert request" forwards the request to certmonger over D-Bus and
> exits
> 
>  3. certmonger creates CSR for the request
> 
>  4. certmonger executes the IPA CA helper to handle the request
> 
>  5. the IPA CA helper calls the cert-request command on the server over
> RPC, using local host credentials for authentication
> 
>  6. cert-request on the server validates the request
> 
>  7. cert-request fetches the configuration for the specified sub-CA, or
> the default sub-CA if none was specified, from LDAP
> 
>  8. cert-request forwards the request to the certmonger CA helper
> specified in the LDAP configuration over D-Bus (this is the D-Bus method
> that currently does not exist and needs to be implemented)
> 
>  9. certmonger executes the specified CA helper to handle the request
> 
>  10. the CA helper requests the certificate from the CA and returns
> either the certificate, wait delay or error
> 
>  11. certmonger returns the result back to cert-request
> 
>  12. cert-request returns the result back to IPA CA helper on the client
> 
>  13. the IPA CA helper on the client returns the result back to certmonger
> 
>  14. if the result was wait delay, certmonger waits and then retries the
> request from step 4, otherwise it stores the certificate or sets error
> status
> 

I guess this would work but I think you'd have quite a difficult time
returning usable error messages to a user (and they are pretty bad now
in cert-request).

I assume that a CSR can be seeded into the certmonger request process
but I've never tried it myself. Do you know if it works?

I really wonder how the case of delayed issuance would be handled. Would
you leave the server-side certmonger request to idle until the second
step was handled? Wouldn't this have the potential to have an
unmanageable number of certmonger requests? It gets confusing enough for
users for the 8 typical tracked certs, what about hundreds?

If you want to eventually use the requestors credentials won't this
require a pretty big change in certmonger to be able to use passed-in
credentials? How will those work in the two-step case?

rob