Hi, I was looking at private CAs since I don’t want to pay for a domain to use in my homelab.

What is everyone using for their private CA? I’ve been looking at plain OpenSSL with some automation scripts but would like more ideas. Also, if you have multiple reverse-proxy instances, how do you distribute domain-specific signed certificates to them? I’m not planning to use a wildcard, and would like to rotate certificates often.

Thanks!


Edit: thank you for everyone who commented! I would like to say that I recognise the technical difficulty in getting such a setup working compared to a simple certbot setup to Let’s Encrypt, but it’s a personal choice that I have made.

  • Not really, although now that I have certs for those anyway, maybe I should.
    More like I’m using some services on the go that I want to always work, whether I’m on the LAN or on the go.
    Opening home automation or 3d printers to the Internet is unwise to say the least.
    mTLS in the reverse proxy for those allows me to have more security without having to establish a VPN first.