README.md

NERC Internal Certificate Authority

For generating locally trusted certificates, primarily to permit internal clusters to interact with the nerc-ocp-infra vault instance.

Configure the step command line tool

1. Install the step command line tool.

2. Get the fingerprint of the root certificate:

   fingerprint=$(curl -s -k https://step-ca.apps.nerc-ocp-infra.rc.fas.harvard.edu/roots.pem | step certificate fingerprint /dev/stdin)
   

3. Configure the client with the step ca bootstrap command:

   step ca bootstrap --ca-url https://step-ca.apps.nerc-ocp-infra.rc.fas.harvard.edu --fingerprint "$fingerprint"
   

   You should see output like:

   The root certificate has been saved in /home/larsks/.step/authorities/step-ca.apps.nerc-ocp-infra.rc.fas.harvard.edu/certs/root_ca.crt.
   The authority configuration has been saved in /home/larsks/.step/authorities/step-ca.apps.nerc-ocp-infra.rc.fas.harvard.edu/config/defaults.json.
   The profile configuration has been saved in /home/larsks/.step/profiles/step-ca.apps.nerc-ocp-infra.rc.fas.harvard.edu/config/defaults.json.
   

Issue a certificate

You can issue certificates using the step ca certficiate command. For example, to issue a certificate for api.nerc-ocp-test.rc.fas.harvard.edu, you would run:

step ca certificate api.nerc-ocp-test.rc.fas.harvard.edu server.crt server.key

This will prompt you for a password:

✔ Provisioner: admin (JWK) [kid: Lbb59Yv-nw1pUWV400-TU7W03jfjoo33qF4eccY1jG4]
Please enter the password to decrypt the provisioner key: █

Use the password field from nerc-ocp-infra/step-ca/step-ca-password in the vault.

This would create server.crt with the certificate and server.key with the private key.