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dehydrated-io
dehydrated
Shell2015–2025
dehydrated-io / dehydrated

dehydrated

ACME client implemented as a simple shell-script – just add water

Command Line
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
40Distinct people
54Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
6.3KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

ACME client implemented as a simple shell-script – just add water

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

Don't forget this[1] gem which is my favorite way to use letsencrypt. It will let me run it by cron (or periodic on FreeBSD) plus I can have my own post-run script that takes…

feld used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 10:49:33 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year54 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2015-12-05 13:47:05 UTC to 2025-10-29 02:52:06 UTC.

0510152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 1 submissions, 2 comments20152016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 15 mentions; 0 submissions, 15 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 0 submissions, 6 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 0 submissions, 5 comments20202021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 1 submissions, 4 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 0 submissions, 6 comments2025

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC312
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC15015
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC606
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC505
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC514
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC606

What Hacker News says

3 sources
gregmac·Aug 20, 2021
+1 for dehydrated [1]. Aside from being able to run basically anywhere, it is very easy to script: Create a file with the list of domains you want, and run `dehydrated --cron`. dehydrated will obtain certs and/or modify existing and/or renew, or just do nothing. Certbot is designed for interactive use: obtaining, changing and renewing certificates are all distinct commands, and if you tell it to obtain a cert you already have, it'll just obtain it anyway. Handling this from a script is a huge pain. [1] https://github.com/dehydrated-io/dehydrated
In Another free CA as an alternative to Let's Encrypt
throw0101a·Aug 20, 2021
> If you want to use the www auth you need to allow outbound connections to any IP Only for the time period when you're requesting the cert though: it does not have to be open to the entire Internet 24/7. While this may not satisfy your personal / particular level of security concern, but it is something worth keeping in mind. Using the dehydrated client as an example, the web server could be started and stopped (or the host's firewall rules altered) in the startup_hook() / exit_hook() functions, or the deploy_challenge() / clean_challenge() functions: * https://github.com/dehydrated-io/dehydrated/blob/master/docs... > otherwise you have the DNS option which means giving the server access to modify the DNS records which is also unsafe should the box get compromised. Are you aware of LE/ACME's "DNS alias" mode? * https://github.com/acmesh-
Read the rest
official/acme.sh/wiki/DNS-alias-mo... * https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/02/technical-deep-dive-se... Let us say you want to get a cert for foo.example.com. Letting an ACME client change the value of that could be a risk, as you state. So what you can do is (manually) create a CNAME _acme-challenge.foo.example.com, and point that elsewhere, like _acme-challenge.foo.dnsauth.example.com. You then allow the ACME client to alter (just) the TXT records of _acme-challenge.foo.dnsauth. People have even written simple DNS server that allow for updating of records via a RESTful API, so you can server just the (e.g.) dnsauth sub-domain from it, leaving your main domain untouched (besides the initial CNAME addition): * https://github.com/joohoi/acme-dns There's also a CLI utility that can handle access the APIs of several dozen DNS companies so you don't have to roll your own if you want to server the sub-domain from your current provider: * https://github.com/AnalogJ/lexicon And you don't have to use a sub-domain, but something else entirely too: instead of dnsauth.example.com you can point the CNAME to example-dnsauth.com or example.org. So if your primary DNS provider doesn't have an API, you can use another one that does. The destination CNAME does not matter as long as you control and can update it.
In Another free CA as an alternative to Let's Encrypt

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