dehydrated - Man Page

dehydrated [command [argument]] [argument [argument]] ...

A client for ACME-based Certificate Authorities, such as LetsEncrypt.  It can be used to request and obtain TLS certificates from an ACME-based certificate authority.

Before any certificates can be requested, Dehydrated needs to acquire an account with the Certificate Authorities. Optionally, an email address can be provided.  It will be used to e.g. notify about expiring certificates. You will usually need to accept the Terms of Service of the CA. Dehydrated will notify if no account is configured. Run with --register --accept-terms to create a new account.

Next, all domain names must be provided in domains.txt. The format is line based: If the file contains two lines "example.com" and "example.net", Dehydrated will request two certificate, one for "example.com" and the other for "example.net". A single line while "example.com example.net" will request a single certificate valid for both "example.net" and "example.com" through the Subject Alternative Name (SAN) field.

For the next step, one way of verifying domain name ownership needs to be configured.  Dehydrated implements http-01 and dns-01 verification.

The http-01 verification provides proof of ownership by providing a challenge token. In order to do that, the directory referenced in the WELLKNOWN config variable needs to be exposed at http://{domain}/.well-known/acme-challenge/, where {domain} is every domain name specified in domains.txt.  Dehydrated does not provide its own challenge responder, but relies on an existing web server to provide the challenge response.  See wellknown.md for configuration examples of popular web servers.

The dns-01 verification works by providing a challenge token through DNS. This is especially interesting for hosts that cannot be exposed to the public Internet.  Because adding records to DNS zones is oftentimes highly specific to the software or the DNS provider at hand, there are many third party hooks available for dehydrated.  See dns-verification.md for hooks for popular DNS servers and DNS hosters.

Finally, the certificates need to be requested and updated on a regular basis. This can happen through a cron job or a timer. Initially, you may enforce this by invoking dehydrated -c manually.

After a successful run, certificates are stored in /etc/dehydrated/certs/{domain}, where {domain} is the domain name in the first column of domains.txt.

Commands

--version,  -v

Print version information

--register

Register account key

--account

Update account contact information

--cron,  -c

Sign/renew non-existent/changed/expiring certificates.

--signcsr,  -s path/to/csr.pem

Sign a given CSR, output CRT on stdout (advanced usage)

--revoke,  -r path/to/cert.pem

Revoke specified certificate

--cleanup,  -gc

Move unused certificate files to archive directory

--help,  -h

Show help text

--env,  -e

Output configuration variables for use in other scripts

Parameters

--accept-terms

Accept CAs terms of service

--full-chain,  -fc

Print full chain when using --signcsr

--ipv4,  -4

Resolve names to IPv4 addresses only

--ipv6,  -6

Resolve names to IPv6 addresses only

--domain,  -d domain.tld

Use specified domain name(s) instead of domains.txt entry (one certificate!)

--keep-going,  -g

Keep going after encountering an error while creating/renewing multiple certificates in cron mode

--force,  -x

Force renew of certificate even if it is longer valid than value in RENEW_DAYS

--no-lock,  -n

Don't use lockfile (potentially dangerous!)

--lock-suffix example.com

Suffix lockfile name with a string (useful for use with -d)

--ocsp

Sets option in CSR indicating OCSP stapling to be mandatory

--privkey,  -p path/to/key.pem

Use specified private key instead of account key (useful for revocation)

--config,  -f path/to/config

Use specified config file

--hook,  -k path/to/hook.sh

Use specified script for hooks

--out,  -o certs/directory

Output certificates into the specified directory

--challenge,  -t [http-01|dns-01]

Which challenge should be used? Currently http-01 and dns-01 are supported

--algo,  -a [rsa|prime256v1|secp384r1]

Which public key algorithm should be used? Supported: rsa, prime256v1 and secp384r1

The program exits 0 if everything was fine, 1 if an error occurred.

Please report any bugs that you may encounter at the project web site https://github.com/lukas2511/dehydrated/issues.

Dehydrated was written by Lukas Schauer. This man page was contributed by Daniel Molkentin.

Copyright 2015-2018 by Lukas Schauer and the respective contributors. Provided under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file that accompanies the distribution for licensing information.

Full documentation along with configuration examples are provided in the docs directory of the distribution, or at https://github.com/lukas2511/dehydrated/tree/master/docs.