is a self signed certificate always invalid the first time

[KT Walrus]

> On Aug 20, 2017, at 11:52 AM, Stephan von Krawczynski <skraw at ithnet.com> wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 19 Aug 2017 21:39:18 -0400
> KT Walrus <kevin at my.walr.us> wrote:
> 
>>> On Aug 18, 2017, at 4:05 AM, Stephan von Krawczynski <skraw at ithnet.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> On Fri, 18 Aug 2017 00:24:39 -0700 (PDT)
>>> Joseph Tam <jtam.home at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Michael Felt <michael at felt.demon.nl> writes:
>>>> 
>>>>>> I use acme.sh for all of my LetsEncrypt certs (web & mail), it is
>>>>>> written in pure shell script, so no python dependencies.
>>>>>> https://github.com/Neilpang/acme.sh    
>>>>> 
>>>>> Thanks - I might look at that, but as Ralph mentions in his reply -
>>>>> Let's encrypt certs are only for three months - never ending circus.    
>>>> 
>>>> I wouldn't characterize it as a circus.  Once you bootstrap your first
>>>> certificate and install the cert-renew cron script, it's not something
>>>> you have to pay a lot of attention to.  I have a few LE certs in use,
>>>> and I don't think about it anymore: it just works.
>>>> 
>>>> The shorter cert lifetime also helps limit damage if your certificate
>>>> gets compromised.
>>>> 
>>>> Joseph Tam <jtam.home at gmail.com>  
>>> 
>>> Obviously you do not use clustered environments with more than one node per
>>> service.
>>> Else you would not call it "it just works", because in fact the renewal is
>>> quite big bs as one node must do the job while all the others must be
>>> _offline_.
>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> Regards,
>>> Stephan  
>> 
>> I use DNS verification for LE certs. Much better since generating certs only
>> depends on access to DNS and not your HTTP servers. Cert generation is
>> automatic (on a cron job that runs every night looking for certs that are
>> within 30 days of expiration). Once set up, it is pretty much automatic. I
>> do use Docker to deploy all services for my website which also makes things
>> pretty easy to manage.
>> 
>> Kevin
>> 
> 
> DNS verification sounds nice only on first glimpse.
> If you have a lot of domains and ought to reload your DNS for every
> verification of every single domain that does not look like a method with a
> small footprint or particularly elegant.

I don’t understand what you are trying to say. I have over 170 domains that I generate certs for automatically using the acme.sh script. It is all automatic and requires no “reload your DNS” by me. The script just updates the DNS with a record that Let’s Encrypt checks before issuing the certificate. After Let’s Encrypt verifies that you can update the DNS for your domain with the record, the script removes the record.

This actually works much better than HTTP especially for domains like for email servers that don’t have an HTTP server deployed for them.

Kevin