pcert

plaincert aims to ease the creation of x509 certificates and keys. It can be used as CLI tool or as Go library (pkg.go.dev).

Quick Start

# create CA (myca.crt and myca.key)
pcert create myca --ca

# create server certificate
pcert create myapp.company.com --with myca \
	--server \
	--dns api.myapp.company.com \
	--dns localhost \
	--ip 127.0.0.1 \
	--ip 192.168.10.5

# create client certificate
pcert create myuser --client --with myca

General

With pcert create <name> you can create a new certificate and key. The output file names are constructed using the name (<name>.crt and <name>.key). This can be changed by using the options --cert <file> and --key <file>.
The name is also set as the common name in the subject of the certificate. This can be changed with the --subject option (e.g --subject "CN=My fancy name").
All created certificates, keys and CSRs are saved PEM encoded and all files which are read are expected to be PEM encoded as well.
All options can also be specified using environment variables in the form PCERT_<OPTION> (e.g. --sign-cert is PCERT_SIGN_CERT).
Shell completion can be enabled for bash, zsh, fish and ps (Power Shell). It supports not only completion for the commands, but also for certain flags (e.g. --key-usage, --ext-key-usage, --sign-alg) where the valid options are hard to remember.

source <( pcert completion bash )

Self-Signed Certificates

If no options for signing are specified a self-signed certificate is created. This is used for the creation of a CA certificates or for test purposes.

Create a CA certificate myca.crt and key myca.key:

pcert create myca --ca

Signed Certificates

To sign a new certificate with an existing certificate and key, you can use the options --sign-cert <file> and --sign-key <file>. For these two options there is also the shortform --with <name>, which uses the files <name>.crt and <name>.key.

Create a server certificate signed from myca.crt and myca.key:

pcert create api.test.local --server --with myca

Create a client certificate signed from myca.crt and myca.key:

pcert create myUser --client --with myca

Subject Alternative Names (SANs)

To set subject alternative names on certificates you can use the options --dns, --ip, --email and --uri:

pcert create api.test.local --with myca --server \
	--dns api1.test.local \
	--dns superapi.test.local \
	--ip 127.0.0.1 \
	--ip 192.168.23.5

Profiles

To ease the creation of certificates with certain characteristics theare are three predefined profiles:

• CA: --ca
• Server: --server
• Client: --client

If you use these options, settings (e.g key usage) which are typical for the specific profile are set for you. The same effect can be achieved by using the appropriate options individually.

Expiry

The validity period of certificates default to one year starting from the creation time. The period can be changed by using the options --not-before, --not-after and --expiry. The options --not-before and --not-after allow to set the NotBefore and NotAfter value to a certain date (RFC3339):

pcert create mycert --not-before 2020-01-01T12:00:00+01:00 --not-after 2020-06-01T12:00:00+01:00

The option --expiry allows to specify a duration instead of explicit dates:

# certificate valid until 90days from now
pcert create mycert --expiry 90d

# certificate valid until 3 years (3 * 365 days)
pcert create mycert --expiry 3y

Subject

With the option --subject you can set the subject of the certificate:

pcert create myclient --client --subject "CN=My User/O=Snakeoil Ltd./OU=My Team"

If the option is specified multiple times the values are combined:

export PCERT_SUBJECT="C=CH/L=Bern/O=Snakeoil Ltd."
pcert create myclient --client --subject "CN=David Schneider" --subject "OU=My Org Unit"

This would result in: C=CH/L=Bern/O=Snakeoil Ltd./OU=My Org Unit/CN=David Schneider

Examples

Local CA

Here is an example of how you could use pcert to create a local CA:

Create CA certificate and key in ~/pki:

mkdir ~/pki
pcert create ca --ca --cert ~/pki/ca.crt --key ~/pki/ca.key

If you like you can add the newly created certificate ~/pki/ca.crt to you system trust store.

Now we set PCERT_SIGN_CERT and PCERT_SIGN_KEY that all newly created certificates are signed with our CA in ~/pki. This could be added for example to .bashrc:

export PCERT_SIGN_CERT=~/pki/ca.crt
export PCERT_SIGN_KEY=~/pki/ca.key

From now on if we use pcert create it creates certificates which are signed by our local CA.

Intermediate CA

This example shows how to make an intermediate CA certificate:

Create root CA certificate and key:

pcert create myroot --ca

Create intermediate CA certificate:

pcert create myindtermediate --ca --sign-cert myroot.crt --sign-key myroot.key

Create server certificate from the intermediate CA:

pcert create myserver --server --sign-cert myindtermediate.crt --sign-key myindtermediate.key