CERTWATCH(1)

📦 version 1.3, in epel 9, fedora 43, fedora 44

💖 CERTWATCH — the certwatch girlies' guide 💖

okay so bestie, welcome to certwatch(1) — the little tool that slides into your inbox like "hey queen, your SSL/TLS certificate is about to expire 👀". It's from the certwatch manual, section 1, and yes we're doing this whole thing together, no skimming, no skipping, we get ALL the details. periodt. ✨

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

certwatch [OPTION...] filename

that's it. that's the whole vibe. one file, some options, let's go. 💅

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so certwatch is the program you run when you want a warning mail about an SSL/TLS certificate that's about to expire. Like, it's the friend who texts you "girl your cert expires in a month" before everything catches fire. 🔥

It has two modes of operation, and this is important bestie, so pay attention:

  • normal mode — the certificate given by the filename argument gets examined, and a warning email is issued to standard output if the certificate is outside its validity period, or approaching expiry. 🎀
  • quiet mode — literally no output at all, but the exit status still tells you everything. silent but iconic. 🤫
also, a very real heads-up: if the certificate can't be found, or any errors happen whilst parsing it, the certificate is just ignored and no output is produced. not a drill, not a bug, that's just how she moves. 💀

✨ OPTIONS ✨

  • --quiet, -q — turns on quiet mode. no output is produced whether the certificate is expired or not. she's giving mystery, she's giving nothing, she's giving exit codes only. 🫶
  • --period days, -p days — tells her how many days out to start warning you. the default is 30. and listen: expiry warnings are always produced if, on the day of invocation, the certificate is not yet valid, has already expired, or is due to expire either that day or the following day. so like, the near-death ones always get flagged, no matter what you set. 😭
  • --address address, -a address — the address used in the To field of the warning e-mail issued when quiet mode is not enabled. the default is root. 💌
  • --help, -h — displays usage information. your "help me bestie" button. 🌈

💅 DIAGNOSTICS 💅

the exit code is basically the vibe check for the certificate. here's the tea:

  1. 0 — the certificate is outside its validity period, or approaching expiry. ⏰
  2. 1 — the certificate is inside its validity period, or could not be parsed. 🧚
  3. 2 — an invalid argument was passed. 🚩
so yeah, exit 0 means "uh oh she's expiring", not "all good". confusing? yes. iconic? also yes. don't shoot the messenger. 💀

👑 SEE ALSO 👑

🌟 AUTHOR 🌟

Joe Orton <jorton@redhat.com>

  • Author

and that's the whole page, bestie!! 💖✨🎀 this was certwatch from February 2019, page CERTWATCH(1) — mwah, go warn somebody about their certs, ily, bye! 🦋🌸💜

📦 where this page comes from