Update a Puppet certificate to make it suitable for CLI authentication

Puppet 6.0.0 introduced a new way to authorize CLI requests by adding a cli-auth extension in the master's node certificate. The puppetserver ca command use the node certificate to authenticate requests, and the default puppetserver/conf.d/auth.conf only allow certificates with the appropriate cli-auth extension to perform actions.

Users upgrading from a previous Puppet version, users who are not generating a new PKI and using their old PKI will not be able to use the puppetserver ca command out of the box. They need to either adjust the puppetserver/conf.d/auth.conf configuration to explicitly allow the nodes which should be able to access the proper API endpoints or add the cli-auth extension to their master mode certificate.

The first approach is simpler, but your local configuration will diverge from the default one. For this reason, you might prefer to take the second approach. This project is all about doing this easily.

Related links:

• Backport CA CLI auth extension for master cert
• Update puppetserver's CA bootstrapping code to add CLI tool auth extension
• The master cert created by generate should have custom extensions for the cert_status endpoint auth
• Pull Request on GitHub

On AIO nodes, the call sequence is as simple as:

./add-cli-auth-to-certificate /etc/puppetlabs/puppet/ssl/certs/$(hostname -f).pem

If the ssldir is not the AIO default one, it's possible to explicitly provide the path to the ca certificate and key:

./add-cli-auth-to-certificate -k /var/puppet/ssl/ca/ca_key.pem -c /var/puppet/ssl/ca/ca_crt.pem /var/puppet/ssl/certs/$(hostname).pem