ENTERPRISE This is an EJBCA Enterprise feature.

The EJBCA ConfigDump tool allows you to export and import configurations in a human-readable (YAML) format. Exporting the current state of your installation is useful for auditing purposes and comparing configuration changes made in EJBCA. The import functionality allows you to import a complete configuration, or a configuration containing, for example a set of profiles, CAs, or any other previously exported object into EJBCA.

Since the configuration dump itself is human-readable, you can edit the fields in each object (for example, change the subject DN of an end entity profile) before import.

The following sections provide a short comparison between the ConfigDump tool, and our earlier Statedump configuration management tool, followed by information about how to build and run ConfigDump, and the commands to use for export and import.

Comparison Between ConfigDump and Statedump

ConfigDump serves as a partial replacement for the Statedump configuration management tool.

Statedump allows exporting and importing full EJBCA configurations on new instances using the export format XML that is not meant to be human-readable and thus makes it poorly suited as an audit tool.

The new ConfigDump tool instead produces a human-readable YAML output, which allows you to hand-modify exports.

The following provides a high-level comparison between ConfigDump and Statedump.

Functionality	ConfigDump	Statedump
Output format	YAML	XML
Can be easily edited	Yes	No
Export	Yes	Yes
Import	Yes	Yes
Ability to add comments to output files	Yes	No

Folder Structure and Output

Each EJBCA object is exported into its own file. Objects of different types will be put in different folders.

The following displays an example of a directory structure created by ConfigDump:

Directory structure

> tree
.
├── certification-authorities
│   ├── PrimeKey TestNet.yml
├── validators
│   ├── My CAA Validator.yml
│   ├── My RSA Key Validator.yml 

The following displays an example output from ConfigDump:

Configdump output example

'Type': 'PARTITIONED_APPROVAL'
'Name': 'Partitioned approval profile test'
'Approval expiration period': '1d'
'Request expiration period': '2d'
'Max extension time': '3d'
'Allow self-approved request editing': !!bool 'true'
'Steps':
- 'Partitions':
  - 'Title': 'Partition 1'
    'Can approve':
    - 'Super Administrator'
    - 'RA Administrator 1'
    'Can view':
    - 'Super Administrator'
    - 'CA Administrator'
    - 'RA Administrator 1'
    - 'RA Administrator 2'
    - 'Supervisor'
    'Components':
    - 'Type': 'Text field'
      'Label': 'Text test'
      'Content': 'This is a multiline string.'
    - 'Type': 'Checkbox'
      'Label': 'Checkbox test'
      'Is checked?': !!bool 'true'
    - 'Type': 'Radio group'
      'Label': 'Radio test'
      'Selected choice': 'Blue'
      'Possible choices':
      - 'Green'
      - 'Blue'
      - 'Red'
  - 'Title': 'Partition 2'
    'Can approve':
    - 'Super Administrator'
    - 'RA Administrator 2'
    'Can view':
    - 'Anybody'
    'Administrator notification':
      'Sender': 'no-reply@admin.notification'
      'Recipients':
      - 'recipient1@admin.com'
      - 'recipient2.admin.com'
      'Subject': 'Admin notification subject'
      'Body': 'Admin notification body'
    'User notification':
      'Sender': 'no-reply@user.notification'
      'Subject': 'User notification subject'
      'Body': 'User notification body'
    'Components':
    - 'Type': 'Number'
      'Label': 'Integer test'
      'Value': !!int '42'
    - 'Type': 'Big number'
      'Label': 'Long test'
      'Value': !!int '9223372036854775807'

As we can see, this YAML-file corresponds to a partitioned approval profile with one step and two partitions. Partition 1 contains a text field, a checkbox and a radio group with three radio buttons. Partition 2 contains a user notification, an administrator notification, and two number fields.

Exportable Object Types

The following lists available object types that can be exported using ConfigDump:

acme-config
admin-preferences
admin-roles
approval-profiles
certificate-profiles
certification-authorities
crypto-tokens
ct-logs
custom-certificate-extensions
end-entity-profiles
est-config
extended-key-usage
internal-key-bindings
ocsp-configuration
peer-connectors
publishers
scep-config
services
validators

Building

To build and run the ConfigDump tool from the command line, using the following build argument:

$ ant configdump

This results in a standalone JAR library deployed to dist/configdump/configdump.jar. To run it, use the following command:

$ ./dist/configdump/configdump.sh

Export

The following lists sub-commands for the export command.

To see the full manual file for the export command, run:

$ ./dist/configdump/configdump.sh export --help

The export command produces a complete YAML-based export of an EJBCA installation, meant to be human-readable. Thus, ID references for objects will be replaced with their proper names. Certificates and end entity information will not be included in this export.

Mandatory Parameters

Switch	Description
-l (may be omitted of this value is added first)	The output directory where YAML files will be written. It will be created automatically if non-existent. Provide absolute path to the directory e.g. /home/user/configdumpresult etc. Any existing dump files will be overwritten.

Optional Parameters

Switch	Description
--exclude	Names of items/types to exclude in the export, separated by a semicolon. Type and name are separated by a colon, and wildcards "" are allowed. Both are case-insensitive. E.g. --exclude ":Example CA; cryptotoken:Example; systemconfiguration:" Supported types are: ACMECONFIG, CA, CRYPTOTOKEN, PUBLISHER, APPROVALPROFILE, CERTPROFILE, EEPROFILE, SERVICE, ROLE, KEYBINDING, ENDENTITY, SYSCONFIG, ADMINPREFS, CMPCONFIG, OCSPCONFIG, PEERCONNECTOR, PEERCONFIG, SCEPCONFIG, ESTCONFIG, VALIDATOR, CTLOG, EXTENDEDKEYUSAGE, CERTEXTENSION
--ignore-errors	Print a warning instead of aborting and throwing an exception on errors.
--ignore-warnings	No warnings will be printed in the CLI output.
--include	Names of items/types to include in the export. The syntax is identical to that of --exclude. For items of types that aren't listed, everything is included.
--include-external-cas	Enables export of external CAs (i.e. CAs where there's only a certificate and nothing else).
--with-defaults	Also include fields having the default value.

Import

The following lists sub-commands for the import command.

To see the full manual file for the import command, run:

$ ./dist/configdump/configdump.sh import --help

The import command reads from a YAML-based export of an EJBCA installation, or YAML-files created following the same structure as an export.

Mandatory Parameters

Switch	Description
-l	The input directory to read dump YAML files from.

Optional Parameters

Switch	Description
--ignore-errors	Print a warning instead of aborting and throwing an exception on errors.
--ignore-warnings	No warnings will be printed in the CLI output.
--initialize	Generate initial certificate for CAs on import.
--non-interactive	Set non-interactive mode. Mode must be one of: <continue> or <abort>
--overwrite	Don't prompt for overwrite. Mode must be one of: <update> or <skip>. When an object from the YAML file already exists in the database, this object should be skipped from import or be updated.
--resolve-reference	Don't prompt for reference problem. Mode must be one of: <default> or <skip>. When an object to be imported is referencing a missing object, this object should get a default value for the missing object or be skipped from import.

Known Limitations

The following objects are available for ConfigDump export, though not yet importable in version 7.3.

admin-preferences
approval-profiles
crypto-tokens
ct-logs
est-config
ocsp-configuration
peer-connectors
validators

Troubleshooting

If EJBCA is running as a different user than ConfigDump (which may happen whenever you log in as foo but EJBCA is running as e.g. wildfly) you may run into the following problem when exporting:

Exporting to directory: /home/foo/configdump
java.nio.file.AccessDeniedException: /home/foo/configdump
[....]

The solution is to create the folder manually with the proper group ownership, according to the following example:

mkdir ~/configdump
sudo chown foo:wildfly ~/configdump