Installing EJBCA

What made me want to install EJBCA?

When I setup 802.11x (RADIUS/Enterprise Wi-Fi) for my home network, I was asked, do you trust this certificate, and then I thought, can I personalise this certificate? So I did exactly that, but then I thought, why shouldn't I setup my own CA (Certificate Authority)? First, I looked at my services, does one of them support managing a CA? Then I found ADCS (Windows Server), and I tried setting it up, to no avail. So eventually I scoured the internet, and found this article: https://arminreiter.com/2022/01/create-your-own-certificate-authority-ca-using-openssl/, but it was using the command line, I mean, I am comfortable using it, but I just wanted something simple, from my browser. So I asked ChatGPT, and after looking at the possibilities, websites, and ways to set it up, I eventually chose EJBCA.

Installing EJBCA

I'm going to use Docker, so if you want to use another way of installing it, you may need to skip a bit.

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In this tutorial, I'll use Ubuntu Server 22.04. There may be some things that won't work depending on your chosen distro.

Prerequisites

Docker engine
Docker compose v2

Creating the directory and file

First, cd to the directory you want the EJBCA files to be in. In my case it's my home directory, ~. Use the following command to cd there.

$ cd ~/

Now, let's create and cd into the directory using

$ mkdir ejbca/ && cd ejbca/

After that, create a compose file using

$ nano compose.yml

With the following text, you can edit it to your needs.

version: '3'

services:
  ejbca:
    image: primekey/ejbca-ce:latest
    container_name: ejbca
    environment:
      - DB_HOST=db
      - DB_DATABASE=ejbca
      - DB_USERNAME=ejbca
      - DB_PASSWORD= # Change this to a secure password
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
      - "8443:8443"
    depends_on:
      - db

  db:
    image: mysql:5.7
    container_name: ejbca_db
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: # Change this to another secure password
      MYSQL_DATABASE: ejbca
      MYSQL_USER: ejbca
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: # Change this to the first password
    volumes:
      - db_data:/var/lib/mysql

volumes:
  db_data:

Starting and accessing the container

Now, Start the container using

$ sudo docker compose up

When you come across this block of text, you are ready to browse to https://yourIP:8443/ejbca/adminweb/

That finishes this installation of EJBCA. Thanks for reading!