Not having to deal with certificate renewal is a big deal.

Is it? I spent one day getting certbot up and running, and ever since then it's been pretty much a done deal.

That's 1 day that I didn't have to spend, even better when dealing with many instances.

Okay, I agree, with two caveats:

1. The cost does not scale with the amount of instances since it is the one-time cost to create the configuration package.

2. If you decide to go for Caddy instead, you'll have to spend the same time, if not more, learning Caddy.

I am running nginx reverse-proxying to a python API right now. Dealing with certificate renewal is a matter of running a daily cronjob issuing 'certbot renew'. If it works it replaces the fullchain.pem certificate, and that's it, easy peasy.

Am I missing something?

And by running Caddy instead, I have one less piece to monitor and worry about.

The way Let's Encrypt works, it makes a lot of sense to have the functionality be part of the web server.

> by running Caddy instead, I have one less piece to monitor and worry about

No, with Caddy you have several vaguely related pieces glued together with superglue.

> The way Let's Encrypt works, it makes a lot of sense to have the functionality be part of the web server.

I think this thread is pretty much proof that that approach will bite you in the ass.

> I think this thread is pretty much proof that that approach will bite you in the ass.

What bit me here is the fact that I'm running alpha software instead of a battle-tested web server; I'm doing so willingly, with full awareness of the risks that that entails.

Drawing the conclusion you did from the variables at play is shortsighted. If anything bites people in the ass, it's prejudice and shortsightedness. I wouldn't want you handling my ops/infrastructure.

> What bit me here is the fact that I'm running alpha software

This wasn't caused by a bug. This was a deliberate decision to fail to start if the certificates on-disk were <= 30 days away from expiring and the CA can't be contacted.

> Drawing the conclusion you did from the variables at play is shortsighted

Using caddy is the web-server-stack equivalent of "putting all your eggs in one basket". If one thing about it isn't working the way you want, you have to either a) replace it completely or b) work out how to disable the bit that's not working how you want, and replace that part of it.

> Drawing the conclusion you did from the variables at play is shortsighted

- People use a piece of software that serves as both ACME TLS certificate client and web server

- Said software by design won't start if the CA can't be contacted 30-days out from expiry

The conclusion I drew is that such integration leave the operator with less control than if they followed a separation-of-concerns approach, and left web serving to a web server, and TLS certificate renewal to an ACME client. The former doesn't need to care about how old the certificates are, just use what it's given.

You're drawing conclusions from unintended behaviour, which has now changed (and a release has been issued).

I still think that refusing to start if the cert expires in 7 days or less is still an issue if Let's Encrypt is down.

There should be at most a warning but it should start. Otherwise you end up with an external dependency that can cause your web server to not start through no fault of your own.

> unintended behaviour

Ahem. https://github.com/mholt/caddy/issues/1680#issuecomment-3026...

Emphasis mine:

> So, this is not a bug and all is working as intended.

Have you noticed that the bug has been fixed?

why do you keep calling it a bug?

> The way Let's Encrypt works, it makes a lot of sense to have the functionality be part of the web server.

That's an odd thing to say in this particular conversation thread...

Why would you want to tightly couple your webserver to the availability of another service provider?

It's not tightly coupled any more than it would be with certbot. The issue I filed is an issue because it's unexpected behaviour (despite early closure, it has actually now been fixed).

The simple config syntax and sane defaults is nice in Caddy. For example, 3 lines of config nets a https server with http/2 support and an A rating with Qualsys for ssl setup.

> sane defaults

Failure to start if a CA is down is a "sane default" ?

Yes, that's exactly what I meant. You can tell because I didn't present any examples. And because one issue invalidates everything else. And I didn't express my opinion on this issue up thread.

I switched from nginx to caddy for my (extremely low-traffic) server because I was tired of having to copy & paste a bunch of SSL setup any time I was configuring a new domain.