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Installing autocert

Prerequisites

To get started you'll need kubectl and a cluster running kubernetes 1.9 or later with admission webhooks enabled:

$ kubectl version --short
Client Version: v1.13.1
Server Version: v1.10.11
$ kubectl api-versions | grep "admissionregistration.k8s.io/v1beta1"
admissionregistration.k8s.io/v1beta1

Install

The easiest way to install autocert is to run:

kubectl run autocert-init -it --rm --image smallstep/autocert-init --restart Never

💥 installation complete.

You might want to check out what this command does before running it.

Manual install

To install manually you'll need to install step version 0.18.2 or later.

$ step version
Smallstep CLI/0.18.2 (darwin/amd64)
Release Date: 2022-03-30 06:08 UTC

Create a CA

Set your STEPPATH to a working directory where we can stage our CA artifacts before we push them to kubernetes. You can delete this directory once installation is complete.

$ export STEPPATH=$(mktemp -d /tmp/step.XXX)
$ step path
/tmp/step.0kE

Run step ca init to generate a root certificate and CA configuration for your cluster. You'll be prompted for a password that will be used to encrypt key material.

$ step ca init \
    --name Autocert \
    --dns "ca.step.svc.cluster.local,127.0.0.1" \
    --address ":4443" \
    --provisioner admin \
    --with-ca-url "ca.step.svc.cluster.local"

For older versions of step run this command without the flags.

Add provisioning credentials for use by autocert. You'll be prompted for a password for autocert.

$ step ca provisioner add autocert --create

For older versions of step:

  • Run step ca init and follow prompts
  • Edit $(step path)/config/ca.json and change base paths to /home/step
  • Edit $(step path)/config/defaults.json to change base paths to /home/step and remove port from CA URL
$ sed -i "" "s|ca.step.svc.cluster.local:4443|ca.step.svc.cluster.local|" $(step path)/config/defaults.json

Install the CA in Kubernetes

We'll be creating a new kubernetes namespace and setting up some RBAC rules during installation. You'll need appropriate permissions in your cluster (e.g., you may need to be cluster-admin). GKE, in particular, does not give the cluster owner these rights by default. You can give yourself cluster-admin rights on GKE by running:

kubectl create clusterrolebinding cluster-admin-binding \
    --clusterrole cluster-admin \
    --user $(gcloud config get-value account)

We'll install our CA and the autocert controller in the step namespace.

$ kubectl create namespace step

To install the CA we need to configmap the CA certificates, signing keys, and configuration artifacts. Note that key material is encrypted so we don't need to use secrets.

$ kubectl -n step create configmap config --from-file $(step path)/config
$ kubectl -n step create configmap certs --from-file $(step path)/certs
$ kubectl -n step create configmap secrets --from-file $(step path)/secrets

But we will need to create secrets for the CA and autocert to decrypt their keys:

$ kubectl -n step create secret generic ca-password --from-literal password=<ca-password>
$ kubectl -n step create secret generic autocert-password --from-literal password=<autocert-password>

Where <ca-password> is the password you entered during step ca init and <autocert-password> is the password you entered during step ca provisioner add.

Next, we'll install the CA.

$ kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/smallstep/autocert/master/install/01-step-ca.yaml

Once you've done this you can delete the temporary $STEPPATH directory and unset STEPPATH (though you may want to retain it as a backup).

Install autocert in Kubernetes

Install the autocert controller.

$ kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/smallstep/autocert/master/install/02-autocert.yaml

Autocert creates secrets containing single-use bootstrap tokens for pods to authenticate with the CA and obtain a certificate. The tokens are automatically cleaned up after they expire. To do this, autocert needs permission to create and delete secrets in your cluster.

If you have RBAC enabled in your cluster, apply rbac.yaml to give autocert these permissions.

$ kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/smallstep/autocert/master/install/03-rbac.yaml

Finally, register the autocert mutation webhook with kubernetes.

$ cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
apiVersion: admissionregistration.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: MutatingWebhookConfiguration
metadata:
  name: autocert-webhook-config
  labels: {app: autocert}
webhooks:
  - name: autocert.step.sm
    clientConfig:
      service:
        name: autocert
        namespace: step
        path: "/mutate"
      caBundle: $(cat $(step path)/certs/root_ca.crt | base64 | tr -d '\n')
    rules:
      - operations: ["CREATE"]
        apiGroups: [""]
        apiVersions: ["v1"]
        resources: ["pods"]
    failurePolicy: Ignore
    namespaceSelector:
      matchLabels:
        autocert.step.sm: enabled
EOF

Check your work

If everything worked you should have CA and controller pods running in the step namespace and your webhook configuration should be installed:

$ kubectl -n step get pods
NAME                          READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
ca-7577d7d667-vtfq5           1/1     Running   0          1m
controller-86bd99bd96-s9zlc   1/1     Running   0          28s
$ kubectl get mutatingwebhookconfiguration
NAME                      CREATED AT
autocert-webhook-config   2019-01-17T22:57:57Z

Move on to usage instructions

Make sure to follow the autocert usage steps at https://github.com/smallstep/autocert/blob/master/README.md#usage