Generating Certs to Secure gRPC

GoAlert can use x509 certificates to serve as authorization for sysapi access.

Using GoAlert's Built-In Tools

The GoAlert binary has built-in sub-commands to simplify generating required certifications for secure gRPC communication. It is broken into three steps:

Generate CA files for creating & verifying future certificates
Generate 1 or more server certificates to give to GoAlert
Generate 1 or more client certificates to give to plugins

If setting up GoAlert for the first time, you can generate all files at once with goalert gen-cert all.

1. Generating CA Files

Run goalert gen-cert ca to generate the CA files:

system.ca.pem
system.ca.key
plugin.ca.pem
plugin.ca.key

Keep these files secure (esp. the .key files), as they are only used to generate the deployment cert files.

2. Generating the Server Certificates

Run goalert gen-cert server to generate the server files:

goalert-server.ca.pem (gets passed to --sysapi-ca-file)
goalert-server.pem (gets passed to --sysapi-cert-file)
goalert-server.key (gets passed to --sysapi-key-file)

These files should be deployed/provided to GoAlert itself.

3. Generating the Plugin Certificates

Run goalert gen-cert client to generate the client files:

goalert-client.ca.pem
goalert-client.pem
goalert-client.key

These files should be deployed/provided to the plugin/services that need access to the GoAlert SystemAPI.