[Acme] Remove the hyphen from the acceptable character set for _acme-challenge TXT records.

Mark Tomlin <Mark@mimocad.io> Wed, 25 November 2020 21:19 UTC

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From: Mark Tomlin <Mark@mimocad.io>
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2020 16:19:36 -0500
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Subject: [Acme] Remove the hyphen from the acceptable character set for _acme-challenge TXT records.
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Hello everyone,
    I have a bit of a feature request for you all. It's actually to remove
the hyphen from the TXT records to make it easier to copy and paste into a
DNS server record. Here's my scenario. I ran the following command on my
server (Ubuntu 20.04) that as you can see has cerbot on it and a large
number of domains to cover.

certbot certonly --manual --preferred-challenges=dns --email Mark@MimoCAD.io
--server https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory --agree-tos -d
mimocad.io -d *.mimocad.io -d stonybrookems.io -d *.stonybrookems.io -d
stonybrookems.com -d *.stonybrookems.com -d stonybrookems.net -d *.
stonybrookems.net -d stonybrookems.org -d *.stonybrookems.org -d wlvac.com
-d *.wlvac.com -d wlvac.net -d *.wlvac.net -d wlvac.org -d *.wlvac.org -d
wlvacems.com -d *.wlvacems.com -d wlvacems.net -d *.wlvacems.net -d
wlvacems.org -d *.wlvacems.org -d mimosdr.com -d *.mimosdr.com -d
mimosdr.net -d *.mimosdr.net -d mimosdr.org -d *.mimosdr.org

While running that command I would get an output like the following...

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- -
Please deploy a DNS TXT record under the name
_acme-challenge.mimocad.io with the following value:

6-K6v7VjtVpGhJk4d6Zx8qxsg6JFUZbGnnr-bDpKpSc

Before continuing, verify the record is deployed.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- -
Press Enter to Continue

Normal and expected behavior, yes. My issue is with the hyphen character.
>From my client machine macOS 11.0.1 when I'm copying DNS records with a
double click of the string it stops at spaces appropriately but it stops at
hyphens also. In essence, the expected operation of capturing the whole
string inside of the select via double click does not work. This behavior
is certainly produced in my environment and I would think in others as
well. Try it yourself and see what happens! My request is that we simply
discourage or disallow the use of the hyphen in the _acme-challenge TXT
records as it offers poor usability for the accurate copy of these long
complex strings from the console output into the DNS server.

Thank you for your time,
Respectfully.

--
Mark Tomlin, CEO.
MimoCAD Inc.