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From: Shannon Sterz <s.sterz@proxmox.com>
To: pdm-devel@lists.proxmox.com
Subject: [RFC cluster/datacenter-manager/manager/proxmox 00/17] TLS Certificate Staging
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2026 14:03:10 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20260611120327.257523-1-s.sterz@proxmox.com> (raw)

the aim of this series is to allow clients to automatically adapt to regular
certificate rotation. the top-level overview of the mechanism proposed here is
as follows:

- hosts that rotate their certificate create a new certificate at the earliest
  four weeks before their current certificate expires. this certificate is
  considered as "staged" up until it becomes actively used.
- clients can query a host for a staged certificate at any moment, the host
  will provide information such as the fingerprint for the active and staged
  certificate(s).
- at the earliest two weeks before their current certificate expires, hosts may
  start using the "staged" certificate. the two week window is needed to give
  clients enough time to query a potential staged certificate.
- clients, that use fingerprints to validate a TLS certificate, should discard
  the previously used fingerprint and update to the new certificate's
  fingerprint (the previously staged certificate) as soon as they detect its
  usage. connections trying to authenticate themselves with the old Certificate
  should be rejected at this point.

this series implements the host part of this mechanism for pve 9 and pdm. the
first three patches in the series are intended for pve and implement the
staging mechanism. they also make it a little easier to query the certificate
of a node when we don't know the node name specifically.

the next few patches improve how fingerprints are handled for the
proxmox-client and pdm specifically. they also add the certificate info
endpoint to the pve client. specifically the following improvements are
provided:

* if a fingerprint is provided, never fall back to the system's trust store.
  providing proper pinning semantics (patches 4 and 6)
* if a fingerprint of a remote does not match, but pdm-client is in interactive
  mode, allow a user to accept the updated fingerprint then and there. this
  better matches the behaviour in interactive mode of connecting to a
  non-trusted node (patch 7).
* report mismatching fingerprints as untrusted when probing a remote and
  improve how the ui handles such situations by adding more context (patches
  9-11)

the remaining commits mostly prepare and the implement the rotation mechanism
within pdm. pdm will query pve remote nodes once every twelve hours to see if a
new staged certificate becomes available. if a new fingerprint is encountered,
it will be stored in the remotes.cfg. once a staged fingerprint is encountered,
it will replace the active fingerprint.

How to Test
-----------

the easiest way is probably to force pve to rotate and stage certificates by
setting a date with `date --set` that's far enough in the future to trigger the
action and then running `pveupdate`. to force pdm to query its remotes, it's
easiest to run `systemctl restart proxmox-datacenter-api.service`. the daemon
will execute the task query its remotes once on start.

How to Apply & Bump
-------------------

the first patch for pve-manager (02/17) depends on the changes for pve-cluster
(01/17). the second pve-manager patch can be applied independently.

the patches for proxmox-datacenter-manager can all be applied independently,
with the exception of the last one (17/17), which needs the patch for the
pve-api-types (05/17) to be applied and bumped.

Future Work
-----------

1. pbs remotes currently do not rotate their certificates. a series that is as
of yet not applied would add such a mechanism to pbs too. for now pbs remotes
are ignored by the staged certificates mechanism for the most part.

2. backporting of the pve patches to the bookworm branch probably makes sense
to improve compatibility. i'll send such patches once this series is.

3. somewhat orthogonal to this series: the mechanism outlined in the notes of
patch 16 would probably improve adding tasks to pdm.


pve-cluster:

Shannon Sterz (1):
  setup: allow caller to provide the certificate filename

 src/PVE/Cluster/Setup.pm | 4 ++--
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)


pve-manager:

Shannon Sterz (2):
  bin/api: add a new staged certificate when renewing self-signed cert
  api: certificates: if node parameter is 'localhost' return local certs

 PVE/API2/Certificates.pm | 10 +++++++--
 PVE/CertHelpers.pm       |  6 ++++++
 bin/pveupdate            | 44 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------
 3 files changed, 49 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-)


proxmox:

Shannon Sterz (2):
  client: ignore certificate trust store validation result on fp option
  pve-api-types: expose certificates info endpoint

 proxmox-client/src/client.rs        |  5 +----
 pve-api-types/Cargo.toml            |  1 +
 pve-api-types/generate.pl           |  3 +++
 pve-api-types/src/generated/code.rs | 15 ++++++++++++++-
 pve-api-types/src/types/mod.rs      |  1 +
 5 files changed, 20 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)


proxmox-datacenter-manager:

Shannon Sterz (12):
  client: don't short-circuit on valid certificate when tls fp exists
  client: allow users to update a changed fingerprint interactively
  cli/api-types: move Fingerprint to common api type crate
  server: connection: report mismatching fingerprint as untrusted on
    probe
  ui: wizzard: add context if a provided fingerprint did not match
    remote
  ui: wizzard: nodes page: always update fingerprints on user
    confirmation
  pdm-api-types: implement ApiType for Fingerprint
  pdm-api-types: add staged_fingerprints field to NodeUrl
  server: remotes: lock remotes config when updating it
  server: connection: rotate in staged fingerprints when encountering
    them
  server: api: tasks: move `spawn_aborted_on_shutdown()` to super module
  server: bin: api: tasks: add task to discover new staged certificates

 cli/client/src/env/fingerprint_cache.rs       |  91 ++--------
 cli/client/src/env/mod.rs                     |  10 +-
 cli/client/src/main.rs                        |   6 +-
 lib/pdm-api-types/Cargo.toml                  |   1 +
 lib/pdm-api-types/src/fingerprint.rs          |  84 +++++++++
 lib/pdm-api-types/src/lib.rs                  |   3 +
 lib/pdm-api-types/src/remotes.rs              |  15 +-
 server/src/api/pbs/mod.rs                     |   2 +
 server/src/api/pve/mod.rs                     |   3 +
 server/src/api/remotes/mod.rs                 |  28 ++-
 server/src/bin/proxmox-datacenter-api/main.rs |   1 +
 .../tasks/ceph_detection.rs                   |  18 +-
 .../bin/proxmox-datacenter-api/tasks/mod.rs   |  17 ++
 .../tasks/remote_staged_fingerprints.rs       | 149 ++++++++++++++++
 server/src/connection.rs                      | 166 +++++++++++++++---
 ui/src/remotes/config.rs                      |   1 +
 ui/src/remotes/node_url_list.rs               |   1 +
 ui/src/remotes/wizard_page_connect.rs         |  26 ++-
 ui/src/remotes/wizard_page_info.rs            |   1 +
 ui/src/remotes/wizard_page_nodes.rs           |  40 ++++-
 20 files changed, 525 insertions(+), 138 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 lib/pdm-api-types/src/fingerprint.rs
 create mode 100644 server/src/bin/proxmox-datacenter-api/tasks/remote_staged_fingerprints.rs


Summary over all repositories:
  29 files changed, 596 insertions(+), 156 deletions(-)

-- 
Generated by murpp 0.10.0




             reply	other threads:[~2026-06-11 12:04 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 18+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2026-06-11 12:03 Shannon Sterz [this message]
2026-06-11 12:03 ` [PATCH cluster 01/17] setup: allow caller to provide the certificate filename Shannon Sterz
2026-06-11 12:03 ` [PATCH manager 02/17] bin/api: add a new staged certificate when renewing self-signed cert Shannon Sterz
2026-06-11 12:03 ` [PATCH manager 03/17] api: certificates: if node parameter is 'localhost' return local certs Shannon Sterz
2026-06-11 12:03 ` [PATCH proxmox 04/17] client: ignore certificate trust store validation result on fp option Shannon Sterz
2026-06-11 12:03 ` [PATCH proxmox 05/17] pve-api-types: expose certificates info endpoint Shannon Sterz
2026-06-11 12:03 ` [PATCH datacenter-manager 06/17] client: don't short-circuit on valid certificate when tls fp exists Shannon Sterz
2026-06-11 12:03 ` [PATCH datacenter-manager 07/17] client: allow users to update a changed fingerprint interactively Shannon Sterz
2026-06-11 12:03 ` [PATCH datacenter-manager 08/17] cli/api-types: move Fingerprint to common api type crate Shannon Sterz
2026-06-11 12:03 ` [PATCH datacenter-manager 09/17] server: connection: report mismatching fingerprint as untrusted on probe Shannon Sterz
2026-06-11 12:03 ` [PATCH datacenter-manager 10/17] ui: wizzard: add context if a provided fingerprint did not match remote Shannon Sterz
2026-06-11 12:03 ` [PATCH datacenter-manager 11/17] ui: wizzard: nodes page: always update fingerprints on user confirmation Shannon Sterz
2026-06-11 12:03 ` [PATCH datacenter-manager 12/17] pdm-api-types: implement ApiType for Fingerprint Shannon Sterz
2026-06-11 12:03 ` [PATCH datacenter-manager 13/17] pdm-api-types: add staged_fingerprints field to NodeUrl Shannon Sterz
2026-06-11 12:03 ` [PATCH datacenter-manager 14/17] server: remotes: lock remotes config when updating it Shannon Sterz
2026-06-11 12:03 ` [PATCH datacenter-manager 15/17] server: connection: rotate in staged fingerprints when encountering them Shannon Sterz
2026-06-11 12:03 ` [PATCH datacenter-manager 16/17] server: api: tasks: move `spawn_aborted_on_shutdown()` to super module Shannon Sterz
2026-06-11 12:03 ` [PATCH datacenter-manager 17/17] server: bin: api: tasks: add task to discover new staged certificates Shannon Sterz

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