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How to create a small CA

The community.crypto collection offers multiple modules that create private keys, certificate signing requests, and certificates. This guide shows how to create your own small CA and how to use it to sign certificates.

In all examples, we assume that the CA’s private key is password protected, where the password is provided in the secret_ca_passphrase variable.

Set up the CA

Any certificate can be used as a CA certificate. You can create a self-signed certificate (see How to create self-signed certificates), use another CA certificate to sign a new certificate (using the instructions below for signing a certificate), ask (and pay) a commercial CA to sign your CA certificate, etc.

The following instructions show how to set up a simple self-signed CA certificate.

- name: Create private key with password protection
  community.crypto.openssl_privatekey:
    path: /path/to/ca-certificate.key
    passphrase: "{{ secret_ca_passphrase }}"

- name: Create certificate signing request (CSR) for CA certificate
  community.crypto.openssl_csr_pipe:
    privatekey_path: /path/to/ca-certificate.key
    privatekey_passphrase: "{{ secret_ca_passphrase }}"
    common_name: Ansible CA
    use_common_name_for_san: false  # since we do not specify SANs, don't use CN as a SAN
    basic_constraints:
      - 'CA:TRUE'
    basic_constraints_critical: yes
    key_usage:
      - keyCertSign
    key_usage_critical: true
  register: ca_csr

- name: Create self-signed CA certificate from CSR
  community.crypto.x509_certificate:
    path: /path/to/ca-certificate.pem
    csr_content: "{{ ca_csr.csr }}"
    privatekey_path: /path/to/ca-certificate.key
    privatekey_passphrase: "{{ secret_ca_passphrase }}"
    provider: selfsigned

Use the CA to sign a certificate

To sign a certificate, you must pass a CSR to the community.crypto.x509_certificate module or community.crypto.x509_certificate_pipe module.

In the following example, we assume that the certificate to sign (including its private key) are on server_1, while our CA certificate is on server_2. We do not want any key material to leave each respective server.

- name: Create private key for new certificate on server_1
  community.crypto.openssl_privatekey:
    path: /path/to/certificate.key
  delegate_to: server_1
  run_once: true

- name: Create certificate signing request (CSR) for new certificate
  community.crypto.openssl_csr_pipe:
    privatekey_path: /path/to/certificate.key
    subject_alt_name:
      - "DNS:ansible.com"
      - "DNS:www.ansible.com"
      - "DNS:docs.ansible.com"
  delegate_to: server_1
  run_once: true
  register: csr

- name: Sign certificate with our CA
  community.crypto.x509_certificate_pipe:
    csr_content: "{{ csr.csr }}"
    provider: ownca
    ownca_path: /path/to/ca-certificate.pem
    ownca_privatekey_path: /path/to/ca-certificate.key
    ownca_privatekey_passphrase: "{{ secret_ca_passphrase }}"
    ownca_not_after: +365d  # valid for one year
    ownca_not_before: "-1d"  # valid since yesterday
  delegate_to: server_2
  run_once: true
  register: certificate

- name: Write certificate file on server_1
  copy:
    dest: /path/to/certificate.pem
    content: "{{ certificate.certificate }}"
  delegate_to: server_1
  run_once: true

Please note that the above procedure is not idempotent. The following extended example reads the existing certificate from server_1 (if exists) and provides it to the community.crypto.x509_certificate_pipe module, and only writes the result back if it was changed:

- name: Create private key for new certificate on server_1
  community.crypto.openssl_privatekey:
    path: /path/to/certificate.key
  delegate_to: server_1
  run_once: true

- name: Create certificate signing request (CSR) for new certificate
  community.crypto.openssl_csr_pipe:
    privatekey_path: /path/to/certificate.key
    subject_alt_name:
      - "DNS:ansible.com"
      - "DNS:www.ansible.com"
      - "DNS:docs.ansible.com"
  delegate_to: server_1
  run_once: true
  register: csr

- name: Check whether certificate exists
  stat:
    path: /path/to/certificate.pem
  delegate_to: server_1
  run_once: true
  register: certificate_exists

- name: Read existing certificate if exists
  slurp:
    src: /path/to/certificate.pem
  when: certificate_exists.stat.exists
  delegate_to: server_1
  run_once: true
  register: certificate

- name: Sign certificate with our CA
  community.crypto.x509_certificate_pipe:
    content: "{{ (certificate.content | b64decode) if certificate_exists.stat.exists else omit }}"
    csr_content: "{{ csr.csr }}"
    provider: ownca
    ownca_path: /path/to/ca-certificate.pem
    ownca_privatekey_path: /path/to/ca-certificate.key
    ownca_privatekey_passphrase: "{{ secret_ca_passphrase }}"
    ownca_not_after: +365d  # valid for one year
    ownca_not_before: "-1d"  # valid since yesterday
  delegate_to: server_2
  run_once: true
  register: certificate

- name: Write certificate file on server_1
  copy:
    dest: /path/to/certificate.pem
    content: "{{ certificate.certificate }}"
  delegate_to: server_1
  run_once: true
  when: certificate is changed