check_x509 is a script to check the validity of various x509 entities. Currently it checks certificates and CRLs for expiration. In the future it'll likely check for valid CA signatures and other things.

check_x509 was written to fit in well with nagios/nrpe and similar monitoring infrastructures, but also to be an easy-to-use command line utility for checking x509 entities as well as for easy use in cron or other scripts.

Your best bet is to read the POD documentation and the --help option, but the simple invocations are:

check_x509 --certificate /path/to/cert.crt --cert-form PEM --warn 4w \
  --crit 2w -v

Notice the -v option. It's the most useful way to run it interactively, but is too noisy when being used as a plugin to something like Nagios. Another example would be:

check_x509 --crl /path/to/crl.crt --crl-form DER --warn 4w --crit 2w -v

To check a CRL instead of a certificate.

check_x509 also supports bundles of PEM-encoded certificates or CRLs.

check_x509's configuration file is YAML. I find YAML to be great for config files because it's a natural way to represent arbitrary hierarchical data. It does take a few minutes to get used to, but the quick version is:

• key-values are:

foo: var

• arrays are:

- foo
- var

• hashes are:

something:
  foo: bar
  baz: bat

As you can see, nesting is trivial. If you don't understand, don't worry, is a complete example config file included in the distribution to help you.

check_x509 attempts to be a one-stop shop for checking all X509 entities on a box in one step (if you want it to be). In order to do that right, that means check_x509 supports per-entity thresholds.

check_x509 handles bundles of both certificates and CRLs. This is useful for bundles that apache, openssl, or other software may need. When handling this, check_x509 will check each entity in the bundle and report on the bundle as a whole. In verbose mode, the expiration for each object in the bundle will be printed, but only the most sever status is actually used.

• Phil Dibowitz phil@ipom.com http://www.phildev.net/check_x509/