Hi Andrew,

Thanks for the follow-up.

> There's another reason I prefer proactive issuance: I think the server
> should automatically issue a new certificate if an application's
> current certificate is about to expire and its authorizations are still
> valid.  This lets you create an application from a central
> location with access to your account key, and then have your TLS
> frontends/load balancers make unauthenticated GETs to keep the
> certificate up-to-date.  I think this is essential to make short-lived
> certificates work robustly, but it's useful even with longer-lived
> certificates.  I went into further detail in my previous email[1].

Ahhh! Yes, this sounds like a sensible reason to prefer proactive
issuance. I will review your previous email with details and will
reevaluate
my position.

> I understand the bulk issuance use case you describe.  Could it be
> accomplished instead by a boolean field in the application to
> enable/disable the application?

Yes - this might be a good compromise. I'll try and take some time to
compare this versus the EKR PR[0] for the new-authz flow that Richard
linked to in his other reply to this thread to see if one is a better fit
than the other.

My primary motivation for this thread is to decide on *one* method:
proactive or on-finalization. If the proactive approach can support
the bulk issuance case then I could be persuaded to support it as the
One True Issuance Method :-)

- Daniel

(P.s. my timing here wasn't ideal and I leave for vacation today. I will
have to pick this thread up in a weeks time, apologies!)

[0] https://github.com/ietf-wg-acme/acme/pull/165

On Thu, Aug 25, 2016 at 5:41 PM, Andrew Ayer <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Thu, 25 Aug 2016 13:57:25 -0400
> Daniel McCarney <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > In the earlier "Re: [Acme] Preconditions" thread[2] Andrew Ayer seems
> > to agree
> > that there should be only one issuance method to simplify client
> > behaviours, though he favours proactive issuance instead of
> > on-finalization issuance. While
> > it saves a round-trip message I'm not sure that this alone is
> > convincing enough
> > to choose proactive issuance as the one issuance method.
>
> There's another reason I prefer proactive issuance: I think the server
> should automatically issue a new certificate if an application's
> current certificate is about to expire and its authorizations are still
> valid.  This lets you create an application from a central
> location with access to your account key, and then have your TLS
> frontends/load balancers make unauthenticated GETs to keep the
> certificate up-to-date.  I think this is essential to make short-lived
> certificates work robustly, but it's useful even with longer-lived
> certificates.  I went into further detail in my previous email[1].
>
> Requiring an explicit action to issue would mean you'd need some
> process somewhere to request issuance when a cert is about
> to expire.  This process would need access to your account key (so it
> should not run on your frontend servers), and if it fails your
> certificates stop renewing.
>
> I understand the bulk issuance use case you describe.  Could it be
> accomplished instead by a boolean field in the application to
> enable/disable the application?  Certificates would only be issued when
> the application is enabled.  Bulk issuers could pre-create
> authorizations in the disabled state, and enable them when ready to
> issue.
>
> Regards,
> Andrew
>
> [1] https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/acme/current/msg01160.html
>
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