Renew passhportd TLS certificate

Explanation

If you installed PaSSHport a year from now, you may encounter this message when you try to connect :

# ssh passhport@passhport.example.com
No such user in PaSSHport database.
tip: it can be a SSL certificate misconfiguration.
Connection to passhport.example.com closed
#

This usually means that passhport (the script) can't connect to passhportd, and the most common cause is that the TLS certificate generated on installation is outdated.

passhport@passhport-srv:~$ openssl x509 -in /home/passhport/certs/cert.pem -noout -text | grep Validity -A 2
      Validity
          Not Before: Sep 11 10:48:55 2020 GMT
          Not After : Sep 11 10:48:55 2021 GMT
passhport@passhport-srv:~$

As you can see above, the cert is only generated for a year. It has been created on PaSSHport automated installation.

Renew certificate with OpenSSL

To renew the certificate, use the openssl command, as follow :

root@passhport:~# openssl req -new -key "/home/passhport/certs/key.pem" \
-config "/home/passhport/passhport/tools/openssl-for-passhportd.cnf" \
-out "/home/passhport/certs/cert.pem" \
-subj "/C=FR/ST=Ile De France/L=Ivry sur Seine/O=LibrIT/OU=DSI/CN=passhport.librit.fr" \
-x509 \
-days 365 \
-sha256 \
-extensions v3_req
root@passhport:~#

This will generate a self-signed certificate, like the one generated during the installation. It will be valid for 1 year. Change the values to your needs.

Restart passhportd

You now just need to restart passhportd :

root@passhport:~# systemctl restart passhportd.service
root@passhport:~#

You should now be able to use PaSSHport again.