Ability to specify file path for saving the root certificate files

[6sigmadc]

My user case:

My NodeJS scripts and node_modules folder is deployed to "Program Files\MyApp" folder and ran as a window service. When the tool tries to write the root certificate to the node_modules it fails as it has no write permission to do so.

According to the windows guidelines, applications shall not require write permissions to their folder. It will be better if the application writing data to a user profile folder (C:\Users\username\AppData) or to a common data folder (C:\ProgramData).

I wonder if it is OK to add the ability for specifying the path for the root certificates so we can put them somewhere else.

Thanks for making this amazing tool!

[ukoloff]

According to the windows guidelines, applications shall not require write permissions to their folder

Yes, writing to program folder is definetly not a best practice on Windows.
But win-ca was developed primarily as proof of concept.

And in most cases this behaviour is just fine.
I think we should preserve it but allow some fallback to
save certificates to user profile folder in some rare cases.

I wonder if it is OK to add the ability for specifying the path for the root certificates

It is certainly possible (and even easy),
but I prefer not to have any configuration file
(or environment variable,
or registry key etc)

May be we could first try to save to the folder inside node_modules
and if it fails fallback to %USERPROFILE%\.local\win-ca\lib
or something like that.

Will it suit you?

[6sigmadc]

Thanks for the quick response.

Yes I like the fact that the tool is simple to use as all you need is “require” it. Putting them in a fall back location would definitely works for me.

[ukoloff]

Well, try

npm i win-ca@beta

[6sigmadc]

I think I can get it working for my case - it took longer then expected but I am on top of it.

Thanks for the change!

[6sigmadc]

I just tested on my machine and on the client machines and both work like a charm!

[ukoloff]

Great! I plan to release new version tomorrow.

[ukoloff]

win-ca v2.3.0 is out!