I’ve been working on a small app written in golang, and I’d like my local-area network connections to the golang-embedded webserver to be over https.  Most of the clients are going to be scripts running on various servers.

Unfortunately, since this is on a private IP range, we get into the whole certificate-verification thing.  There are a couple ways to solve this problem:

1. Don’t check certificates, but that hardly seems optimal
2. Create my own private CA, have all clients trust it, and use it to issue certificates

#2 is probably the right way to do this.

But something occurred to me.  All https really does is say “yes, somehost.com using that certificate has the private key to that certificate”.  There’s extended verification blah blah but really that’s all https does.  But we’re assuming that the client and the CA agree where somehost.com is.  What if they don’t…

I decided to try it.  I went to a server called dnsg1.lowend.party in the cloud and created an A record for server2.lowend.party that pointed to it (server1 is already in use for a different tutorial!)

Then on dnsg1 I installed certbot:

apt-get install certbot

And now using certbot, I get my Let’s Encrypt cert:

dnsg1:~ # certbot certonly --standalone -d server2.lowend.party
Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log
Plugins selected: Authenticator standalone, Installer None
Requesting a certificate for server2.lowend.party
Performing the following challenges:
http-01 challenge for server2.lowend.party
Waiting for verification...
Cleaning up challenges

IMPORTANT NOTES:
- Congratulations! Your certificate and chain have been saved at:
/etc/letsencrypt/live/server2.lowend.party/fullchain.pem
Your key file has been saved at:
/etc/letsencrypt/live/server2.lowend.party/privkey.pem
Your certificate will expire on 2022-07-03. To obtain a new or...
(blah blah)

So now I have a certficate for ‘server2.lowend.party’ that is signed by Let’s Encrypt.  Will it work on a private network?  You know I’m going to make you hit read more to find out.  And since you’re going to get a 1990s film meme I made just for this post, I don’t feel bad for it.

Reservoir Dogs, 1992

On the real server2.lowend.party, I compiled some basic golang code:

package main

import(
  "net/http"
  "fmt"
  "log"
)

func main() {
  http.HandleFunc( "/", func( res http.ResponseWriter, req *http.Request ) {
    fmt.Fprint( res, "It worked!\n" )
  } )

  log.Fatal( http.ListenAndServeTLS( ":9000", "fullchain.pem", "privkey.pem", nil ) )

}

All this code does is launch an https server on port 9000 and respond to requests to / with “It worked\n”.

Now let’s see if, indeed, it worked.  On another server, called crash, I edited /etc/hosts to set server2.lowend.party to my local IP.  Now when crash tries to find an address for server2.lowend.party, the entry in /etc/hosts will override DNS.

To be perfectly accurate, /etc/nsswitch.conf is consulted, and there you will find a line like (at least in stock Debian 11):

hosts:          files dns

This means consult “files” first (/etc/hosts) and then dns.  You might have other things in the list, such as ldap.  A comment in the file refers to the “GNU Name Service Switch” but this file existed in SunOS 4.x and probably earlier versions.  Well, maybe that was supposed to be called GNU/SunOS.

Anyway, back to our test.  Let’s use wget:

root@crash:~# wget https://server2.lowend.party:9000
--2022-04-04 17:43:25-- https://server2.lowend.party:9000/
Resolving server2.lowend.party (server2.lowend.party)... 192.168.1.10
Connecting to server2.lowend.party (server2.lowend.party)|192.168.1.10|:9000... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 10 [text/plain]
Saving to: ‘index.html’

index.html 100%[=================================================================>] 10 --.-KB/s in 0s

2022-04-04 17:43:25 (20.3 MB/s) - ‘index.html’ saved [10/10]

root@crash:~# cat index.html 
It worked!
root@crash:~#

Of course, eventually it will expire, but it be easy enough to script a renewal and rsync down to server2.  It’s cheesy, but it works!

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raindog308

Dread Lord of LowEnd Content at LowEndBox

I'm raindog308, techno polymath and long-time LowEndTalk community Administrator. My technical interests include all things Unix, perl, python, golang, shell scripting, vintage operating systems such as MVS, and relational database systems such as Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

I also enjoy using LEBs! I have an empire of little guys for VPNs, larger guys for apps, and big guys for databases and storage. When I'm not in front a screen I'm into German Shepherd dogs, quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop roleplaying games, and forest hiking.

I enjoy writing technical articles here on LowEndBox to help people get more out of their systems. You can find me on LowEndTalk @raindog308

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