Overview

Main configuration

The configuration of OpenXPKI consists of two, fundamental different, parts. There is one global system configuration, which holds information about database, filesystem, etc. where the system lives. The second part are the realm configurations, which define the properties of the certificates within the realm. Each pki realm has its own, independant configuration and is isolated from other realm, so you can run instances with different behaviour with one single OpenXPKI server.

We ship the software with a set of YaML files, and we recommend to keep the given layout. The following documentation uses some notations you should know about.

  1. Configuration items are read as a path, which is denoted as a string with the path elements seperated by a dot, e.g. system.database.main.type.
  2. The path is assembled from the directory, the name of the configuration file, the path of the element in the YaML notation. The value from the example above can be found in the directory system, file database.yaml, section main, key type.
  3. All paths except those starting with system or realm refer to the configuration of a particular realm. The root node for building the path is the realm’s directory found at realm/<name of the realm>.

Config versioning

This idea was dropped, configuration is now read freshly from the filesystem at every restart of the daemon.

Activate the new configuration

To activate a new config without a restart, you need to do a reload:

openxpkictl reload

You can also just send a SIGHUP to the main process or restart the dameon.

IMPORTANT

Those parts of the system are preloaded on server init and need a restart to load a new configuration.

  • worflow configuration
  • authentication handlers
  • database settings
  • daemon settings (never change anything below system.server while the dameon is running as you might screw up your system!)

Config Caching and Signing

Instead of reading the config from the filesystem freshly on each startup, there is an option to serialize the config tree into a blob which offers the option to use PKCS7 signatures to verify the configuration.

Transform config tree into blob

Use openxpkiadm buildconfig --config path/to/config.d to generate the blob. The default target is a file config.oxi in the current directory, you specify and alternate location with --target myconfig.blob.

To sign the config blob, you need to add --key and --cert pointing to the PEM encoded key/certificate files. Its good practice to also add the chain certificates to verify the signer up to the root, use --chain to point to a file holding the concatenated PEM block of the issuers to be added.

Enable config bootstrap

You need to create a node named bootstrap on the top level of the configuraion and should remove any other config items. The easiest way to achieve this is to wipe anything from /etc/openxpki/config.d/ and place a file called bootstrap.yaml here:

# this is the only mandatory option
LOCATION: /home/pkiadm/config.oxi

# This is the default and should be left empty unless overridden
# class: OpenXPKI::Config::Loader

# if you want to use signed configs, set ONE of the ca* options
# Path holding the certificates as files (filemame = hash)
# ca_certificate_path: /etc/openxpki/ca/config.certs/
# All certificates in one file
# ca_certificate_file: /etc/openxpki/ca/config.pem

# temp dir, required to create files to perform signature verification
# tmpdir: /tmp

# path to openssl
# openssl: /usr/bin/openssl

Configure signature verification

Signature is validated using openssl smime -verify. If you have placed the chain certificates into the config blob, it is sufficient to have the root certificates here, if not, make sure you have all certificates here to create the full chain. Directory needs to hold the certificates in the well-known openssl hashed filename format, the single file must hold the concatenated PEM blocks.

Note: Currently we do not make any checks on the certificate itself so any certificate from the given roots/chains can be used for signing so it is recommended to setup a dedicated CA for the config signature. We are working on making the signer authorization pattern used in other parts of the system available for config signatures with one of the next releases.

Logging

OpenXPKI uses Log4perl as its primary system log. Logging during startup and in critical situations is done via STDERR.