cockpit-tls(8)

1COCKPIT-TLS(8)                    cockpit-tls                   COCKPIT-TLS(8)
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NAME

6       cockpit-tls - TLS proxy for Cockpit web service
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SYNOPSIS

9       cockpit-tls [--help] [--port PORT] [--no-tls] [--idle-timeout SECONDS]
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DESCRIPTION

12       The cockpit-tls program is a TLS terminating HTTP proxy for cockpit-
13       ws(8). It manages a set of isolated cockpit-ws instances, one per TLS
14       client certificate, plus one for TLS without a client certificate, and
15       one for unencrypted HTTP. With that, one session cannot tamper with
16       another one through possible security vulnerability exploits.
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18       Users or administrators should never need to start this program as it
19       automatically started by systemd(1) via socket activation.
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TRANSPORT SECURITY

22       To specify the TLS certificate the web service should use, simply drop
23       a file with the extension .cert in the /etc/cockpit/ws-certs.d
24       directory. If there are multiple files in this directory, then the
25       highest priority one is chosen after sorting.
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27       The .cert file should contain at least two OpenSSL style PEM blocks.
28       First one or more BEGIN CERTIFICATE blocks for the server certificate
29       and intermediate certificate authorities and a second one containing a
30       BEGIN PRIVATE KEY or similar. The key must not be encrypted.
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32       If there is no TLS certificate, a self-signed certificate is
33       automatically generated using sscg (if available) or openssl and stored
34       in the 0-self-signed.cert file.
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36       When enrolling into a FreeIPA domain, an SSL certificate is requested
37       from the IPA server and stored in 10-ipa.cert.
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39       To check which certificate cockpit-ws will use, run the following
40       command.
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42           $ sudo /usr/libexec/cockpit-certificate-ensure --check
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44       Or, on Debian-based systems:
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46           $ sudo /usr/lib/cockpit/cockpit-certificate-ensure --check
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48       If using certmonger to manage certificates, following command can be
49       used to generate a certificate/key pair:
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51           CERT_FILE=/etc/cockpit/ws-certs.d/50-certmonger.crt
52           KEY_FILE=/etc/cockpit/ws-certs.d/50-certmonger.key
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54           getcert request -f ${CERT_FILE} -k ${KEY_FILE} -D $(hostname --fqdn)
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OPTIONS

57       --help
58           Show help options.
59
60       --port PORT
61           Serve HTTP requests on PORT instead of port 9090. Usually Cockpit
62           is started on demand by systemd socket activation, and this option
63           has no effect. Update the ListenStream directive cockpit.socket
64           file in the usual systemd manner.
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66       --no-tls
67           Don't use TLS. Certificates will not be read, and https connections
68           denied. Then cockpit-tls will only manage a single cockpit-ws
69           instance, and thus not do anything different than running
70           cockpit-ws --no-tls directly. Only use this for debugging or
71           testing.
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73       --idle-timeout SECONDS
74           If greater than 0, exit if no connections have happened for the
75           given number of seconds, i. e. the server is idle. If not given,
76           the default is 90.
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ENVIRONMENT

79       The cockpit-tls program expects the RUNTIME_DIRECTORY environment
80       variable to be set to an empty directory (preferably in /run/) that is
81       only accessible by the system user under which it is running. This
82       contains the Unix sockets for communicating with the cockpit-ws
83       instances, and in the future, state information about client
84       certificates. This variable is normally set by the cockpit.service
85       systemd unit.
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87       In addition, cockpit-tls will use the XDG_CONFIG_DIRS environment
88       variable from the XDG basedir spec[1] to find its certificates and the
89       cockpit.conf(5) configuration file.
90

BUGS

92       Please send bug reports to either the distribution bug tracker or the
93       upstream bug tracker[2].
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AUTHOR

96       Cockpit has been written by many contributors[3].
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NOTES

102        1. XDG basedir spec
103           https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html
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105        2. upstream bug tracker
106           https://github.com/cockpit-project/cockpit/issues/new
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108        3. contributors
109           https://github.com/cockpit-project/cockpit/graphs/contributors
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113cockpit                           01/25/2023                    COCKPIT-TLS(8)