I've been wanting to learn a bit more about SaltStack Config so I recently deployed SSC 8.6 to my environment (using vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager to do so as described here). I selected the option to integrate with my pre-existing vRA and vIDM instances so that I wouldn't have to manage authentication directly since I recall that the LDAP authentication piece was a little clumsy the last time I tried it.
The Problem
Unfortunately I ran into a problem immediately after the deployment completed:
Instead of being redirected to the vIDM authentication screen, I get a 403 Forbidden error.
I used SSH to log in to the SSC appliance as root
, and I found this in the /var/log/raas/raas
log file:
2021-11-05 18:37:47,705 [var.lib.raas.unpack._MEIV8zDs3.raas.mods.vra.params ][ERROR :252 ][Webserver:6170] SSL Exception - https://vra.lab.bowdre.net/csp/gateway/am/api/auth/discovery may be using a self-signed certificate HTTPSConnectionPool(host='vra.lab.bowdre.net', port=443): Max retries exceeded with url: /csp/gateway/am/api/auth/discovery?username=service_type&state=aHR0cHM6Ly9zc2MubGFiLmJvd2RyZS5uZXQvaWRlbnRpdHkvYXBpL2NvcmUvYXV0aG4vY3Nw&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fssc.lab.bowdre.net%2Fidentity%2Fapi%2Fcore%2Fauthn%2Fcsp&client_id=ssc-299XZv71So (Caused by SSLError(SSLCertVerificationError(1, '[SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed: self signed certificate in certificate chain (_ssl.c:1076)')))2021-11-05 18:37:47,928 [tornado.application ][ERROR :1792][Webserver:6170] Uncaught exception GET /csp/gateway/am/api/loggedin/user/profile (192.168.1.100)HTTPServerRequest(protocol='https', host='ssc.lab.bowdre.net', method='GET', uri='/csp/gateway/am/api/loggedin/user/profile', version='HTTP/1.1', remote_ip='192.168.1.100')Traceback (most recent call last): File "urllib3/connectionpool.py", line 706, in urlopen File "urllib3/connectionpool.py", line 382, in _make_request File "urllib3/connectionpool.py", line 1010, in _validate_conn File "urllib3/connection.py", line 421, in connect File "urllib3/util/ssl_.py", line 429, in ssl_wrap_socket File "urllib3/util/ssl_.py", line 472, in _ssl_wrap_socket_impl File "ssl.py", line 423, in wrap_socket File "ssl.py", line 870, in _create File "ssl.py", line 1139, in do_handshakessl.SSLCertVerificationError: [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed: self signed certificate in certificate chain (_ssl.c:1076)
Further, attempting to pull down that URL with curl
also failed:
curl https://vra.lab.bowdre.net/csp/gateway/am/api/auth/discovery curl: (60) SSL certificate problem: self signed certificate in certificate chain More details here: https://curl.se/docs/sslcerts.html curl failed to verify the legitimacy of the server and therefore could notestablish a secure connection to it. To learn more about this situation andhow to fix it, please visit the web page mentioned above.
In my homelab, I am indeed using self-signed certificates. I also encountered the same issue in my lab at work, though, and I'm using certs issued by our enterprise CA there. I had run into a similar problem with previous versions of SSC, but the quick-and-dirty workaround to disable certificate verification doesn't seem to work anymore.
The Solution
Clearly I needed to import either the vRA system's certificate (for my homelab) or the certificate chain for my enterprise CA (for my work environment) into SSC's certificate store so that it will trust vRA. But how?
I fumbled around for a bit and managed to get the required certs added to the system certificate store so that my curl
test would succeed, but trying to access the SSC web UI still gave me a big middle finger. I eventually found this documentation which describes how to configure SSC to work with self-signed certs, and it held the missing detail of how to tell the SaltStack Returner-as-a-Service (RaaS) component that it should use that system certificate store.
So here's what I did to get things working in my homelab:
- Point a browser to my vRA instance, click on the certificate error to view the certificate details, and then export the CA certificate to a local file. (For a self-signed cert issued by LCM, this will likely be called something like
Automatically generated one-off CA authority for vRA
.) - Open the file in a text editor, and copy the contents into a new file on the SSC appliance. I used
~/vra.crt
. - Append the certificate to the end of the system
ca-bundle.crt
:
cat <vra.crt >> /etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt
- Test that I can now
curl
from vRA without a certificate error:
curl https://vra.lab.bowdre.net/csp/gateway/am/api/auth/discovery {"timestamp":1636139143260,"type":"CLIENT_ERROR","status":"400 BAD_REQUEST","error":"Bad Request","serverMessage":"400 BAD_REQUEST \"Required String parameter 'state' is not present\""}
- Edit
/usr/lib/systemd/system/raas.service
to update the service definition so it will look to theca-bundle.crt
file by adding
Environment=REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt
above the ExecStart
line:
1# /usr/lib/systemd/system/raas.service 2[Unit] 3Description=The SaltStack Enterprise API Server 4After=network.target 5[Service] 6Type=simple 7User=raas 8Group=raas 9# to be able to bind port < 102410AmbientCapabilities=CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE11NoNewPrivileges=yes12RestrictAddressFamilies=AF_INET AF_INET6 AF_UNIX AF_NETLINK13PermissionsStartOnly=true14ExecStartPre=/bin/sh -c 'systemctl set-environment FIPS_MODE=$(/opt/vmware/bin/ovfenv -q --key fips-mode)'15ExecStartPre=/bin/sh -c 'systemctl set-environment NODE_TYPE=$(/opt/vmware/bin/ovfenv -q --key node-type)'16Environment=REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt 17ExecStart=/usr/bin/raas18TimeoutStopSec=9019[Install]20WantedBy=multi-user.target
- Stop and restart the
raas
service:
systemctl daemon-reload systemctl stop raassystemctl start raas
- And then try to visit the SSC URL again. This time, it redirects successfully to vIDM:
- Log in and get salty:
The steps for doing this at work with an enterprise CA were pretty similar, with just slightly-different steps 1 and 2:
- Access the enterprise CA and download the CA chain, which came in
.p7b
format. - Use
openssl
to extract the individual certificates:
openssl pkcs7 -inform PEM -outform PEM -in enterprise-ca-chain.p7b -print_certs > enterprise-ca-chain.pem
Copy it to the SSC appliance, and then pick up with Step 3 above.
I'm eager to dive deeper with SSC and figure out how best to leverage it with vRA. I'll let you know if/when I figure out any cool tricks!
In the meantime, maybe my struggles today can help you get past similar hurdles in your SSC deployments.