Certbot plugin for authentication using Gandi LiveDNS - modern

This is a plugin for Certbot that uses the Gandi LiveDNS API to allow Gandi customers to prove control of a domain name.

This plugin is originally based on https://github.com/obynio/certbot-plugin-gandi by Yohann Leon. Due to some missing bugfixes I have forked and published this "modern" version of the plugin to make it usable again.

[!IMPORTANT]
In order to match the naming convention for certbot plugin, the plugin has been repackaged under a new name certbot-dns-plugin and legacy users of the previous package will receive the new package as a dependency.

Usage

1. Obtain a Gandi API Personal Access Token (PAT) - see Gandi LiveDNS API > Authentication.

   Your Gandi personal access token requires minimum permissions in the Domains category to work with the plugin: See and renew domain names & Manage domain name technical configurations.

2. Install the modern plugin and ensure the "non-modern" or "older package name" variants are not present:

   pip uninstall certbot-plugin-gandi certbot-plugin-gandi-modern
   pip install certbot-dns-gandi-modern>=1.6.2
   

3. Create a /etc/letsencrypt/gandi.ini config file with the following contents:

   # Gandi personal access token
   dns_gandi_token=PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN
   

   Replace PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN with your Gandi personal access token. You can also use a Gandi LiveDNS API Key instead, see FAQ below.

4. Ensure permissions are set to disallow access from other users, e.g., using chmod 0600 gandi.ini

5. Run certbot and direct it to use the plugin for authentication with the config file:

   certbot certonly --authenticator dns-gandi --dns-gandi-credentials /etc/letsencrypt/gandi.ini -d example.com
   # or
   certbot renew --authenticator dns-gandi --dns-gandi-credentials /etc/letsencrypt/gandi.ini
   

For backwards-compatibility with the "non-modern" variant of the plugin, the modern variant uses the same authenticator and credentials CLI argument names. Make sure to uninstall any "non-modern" packages to avoid shadowing of CLI argument names.

Please note that this solution is usually not relevant if you're using Gandi's web hosting services as Gandi offers free automated certificates for all simplehosting plans having SSL in the admin interface.

Be aware that the plugin configuration must be provided by CLI, configuration for third-party plugins in cli.ini is not supported by certbot for the moment. Please refer to #4351, #6504 and #7681 for details.

Distribution

PyPI is currently the only distribution mechanism for this "modern" variant of the certbot-plugin-gandi-modern package.

Other channels, as well as the "non-modern" variants are not maintained by me.

• PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/certbot-dns-gandi-modern/

pip uninstall certbot-plugin-gandi certbot-plugin-gandi-modern
pip install certbot-dns-gandi-modern>=1.6.2

Installing this plugin from PyPI using pip will also install a recent version of certbot itself, which may conflict with any other certbot already installed on your system. See the provided Dockerfile on how to containerize certbot + the plugin to run together.

Wildcard certificates

This plugin is particularly useful when you need to obtain a wildcard certificate using dns challenges:

certbot certonly --authenticator dns-gandi --dns-gandi-credentials /etc/letsencrypt/gandi.ini -d example.com -d \*.example.com

Automatic renewal

You can setup automatic renewal using crontab with the following job for weekly renewal attempts:

0 0 * * 0 certbot renew -q --authenticator dns-gandi --dns-gandi-credentials /etc/letsencrypt/gandi.ini

Reading material

• A blog post by @realEmaRocca describing how to use this plugin on Debian.

Keep in mind that this blog post references the "non-modern" variant - so make to install and use the correct "modern" variant if needed.

FAQ

Make sure to uninstall and remove any trace of the "non-modern" or "older package name" variants certbot-plugin-gandi and certbot-plugin-gandi-modern package.

I don't have a personal access token, only a Gandi LiveDNS API Key

Live DNS API keys are deprecated and now unusable.

I have a warning telling me Plugin legacy name certbot-plugin-gandi:dns may be removed in a future version. Please use dns instead.

Certbot had moved to remove 3rd party plugins prefixes since v1.7.0. Please switch to the new configuration format and remove any used prefix-based configuration.

Why do you keep this plugin a third-party plugin ? Just merge it with certbot ?

This Gandi plugin is a third-party plugin mainly because this plugin is not officially backed by Gandi and because Certbot does not accept new plugin submissions.

Credits

Huge thanks to Michael Porter for its original work !

Huge thanks to Yohann Leon for the continuation of this work !