CyberSiftCertificate Manager
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First run and setup guide

After installing, two short steps take you to your first certificate: create the administrator, then walk through the setup guide.

Step 1: Create the administrator

Until an administrator exists, the portal only shows its setup page.

  1. Open https://<your portal>/auth/setup.
  2. Enter the setup code from the log (docker compose logs cert-manager | grep "FIRST RUN" shows a code like 7F3K-92QX-M4TB).
  3. Choose a password for the built-in administrator admin: at least 12 characters.

You are signed in straight away.

Keep this password safe. The built-in administrator always works, even when single sign-on is unavailable. You can change it later in Config → Settings → General.

Step 2: The setup guide

The setup guide opens on its own. Each step saves when you press Save & continue, so you can stop at any point and come back later.

Step What you do Time
1. Licence Enter the licence key (or tick the offline option and upload license.key) 1 min
2. Organisation Your organisation name and the portal's public address (for example https://certs.example.com) 1 min
3. DNS Connect your DNS server or provider. The guide tests the connection 5 min
4. Certificate authority Staging or production, default key type, contact e-mail 1 min
5. Alerts (optional) Who gets expiry warnings: your mail server, or a Teams/Slack webhook 2 min
6. Review A final check of anything still missing —

Tip: start with the staging certificate authority to try things out, then switch to production. Staging certificates are not trusted by browsers, but its limits are far more generous while you experiment.

Step 3: Issue your first certificate

Open Issue, type a host name you control (for example test.example.com), choose a department and press Issue certificate. The log shows each step live. A minute later the certificate appears in Certificates, and it will renew itself from now on.

Is everything set?

Health → Configuration shows anything still missing at any time. Until setup is complete the portal works normally but cannot issue certificates.

What next

  • Sign-in: connect Entra ID or LDAP, then grant access in Config → Access.
  • Departments: split certificates between teams in Config → Departments.
  • Backup: take your first backup in Config → Settings → Backup & storage.