4.3 KiB
status: resolved opened: 2026-08-31 located-in: [mesh-control, mesh-lab] fixed-by: mesh-lab multiple-fixes — the bed, not the proxy: its backend stub never listened and its check read a subject the authority leaves empty; against both Pebble and the catalogue's step-ca the same proxy now orders, answers the challenge, is issued and serves amended-design:
020 — A certificate is issued and never collected
Symptom
Against a real ACME server in the lab, the proxy orders a certificate for a name the mesh routes, the challenge is answered, the authority issues the certificate — and the proxy never obtains it. Every TLS handshake then fails, and the order is retried indefinitely.
The client's error, once per attempt:
http: TLS handshake error: Post "": unsupported protocol scheme ""
A POST to an empty URL: the certificate's location, on an order the authority considers valid.
What is proven, and it is most of it
Read from the authority's own log rather than inferred:
Starting 3 validations
authz … set VALID by completed challenge …
POST /finalize-order/ → Order … is fully authorized. Processing finalization
Issued certificate serial 3ef142939115ee88
The hard half works. The order is created, the HTTP-01 challenge is answered at the name being certified on port 80 through the proxy itself, the authorisation goes valid, finalisation is accepted, and a certificate is issued. Across one run the authority issued two certificates and accepted finalise three times — the client reaches issuance every attempt and fails at the same step after it.
And the policy that guards the quota is proven too. The second assertion in the same file passes: no certificate is ordered for a name nothing routes, so a scan cannot spend an account's rate limit.
What is not known
Whether this happens against a real authority at all. Everything above is against Pebble, which exists to be a test server. The failure is in the last hop between one client and one server, and may say nothing about behaviour against a public authority.
Ruled out
| the directory | fetched and complete — newAccount, newNonce, newOrder, revokeCert all present |
| the authority's API certificate | covers 127.0.0.1; the bundle is named explicitly and verification is not skipped |
| a hand-written server config | suspected, and wrong. Replacing it with the server's own default config, changing only the challenge port, gives the identical error |
| the finalize URL being empty | the authority logs finalisation being accepted |
| the challenge path | the authorisation goes valid |
| the server version | pinned 2.5.0 behaves exactly as latest, so the draft profiles extension is not it |
Where it might be
- The order's
certificatefield is absent when the client reads it. The client waits for the order to become valid and only then fetches, so an empty location on a valid order is the remaining shape. A moving tag was used.Ruled out.pebble:latestadvertises a draft profiles extension, so a pinned 2.5.0 was tried: identical failure. The scenario now pins it anyway, which it should have from the start.
Why this is filed rather than pursued
The mesh-side behaviour is proven and the remainder is interop between two libraries. Continuing would be several more twenty-minute lab runs against a server that is not the one production uses, to chase a defect that may not exist there.
What the mesh needed to show, it showed: a name it routes gets a certificate ordered from a configured authority, and a name it does not route gets nothing. The configuration is right, the challenge path is right, and issuance happens.
What would close it
- The same scenario against a different ACME implementation — a second server, or a real staging endpoint from a machine that can reach one. If it passes there, this is a Pebble interop detail and the issue closes with that recorded.
- Or the client's request captured on the wire, showing what the order actually contained when the location was read.
Evidence
mesh-lab test/integration/certificates.test.ts, scenarioa-public-name- One assertion passes (no certificate for an unrouted name); one fails (a routed name is never served).