Skip to main content

Fixing "UNABLE_TO_VERIFY_LEAF_SIGNATURE" when running Renovate against an internal Azure DevOps server

Recently I ran into a failing Renovate pipeline right after configuring it against our internal Azure DevOps server:

"err": {
     "code": "UNABLE_TO_VERIFY_LEAF_SIGNATURE",
     "message": "unable to verify the first certificate; if the root CA is installed locally, try running Node.js with --use-system-ca"
   }
Error: unable to verify the first certificate; if the root CA is installed locally, try running Node.js with --use-system-ca
    at TLSSocket.onConnectSecure (node:internal/tls/wrap:1748:34)
    at TLSSocket.emit (node:events:509:28)
    at TLSSocket.emit (node:domain:489:12)
    at TLSSocket._finishInit (node:internal/tls/wrap:1185:8)
    at TLSWrap.ssl.onhandshakedone (node:internal/tls/wrap:966:12)

The root cause: Renovate runs on Node.js, and Node doesn't use the Windows certificate store by default. Our internal Azure DevOps server presents a certificate signed by our internal CA, and Node has no idea that CA exists. So the TLS handshake fails before Renovate ever gets to talk to the server.

Remark: The suggestion in the error message to run Node.js with the --use-system-ca flag, I couldn’t get it working.


The fix: point Node to your internal CA

The trick is the NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS environment variable. Set it to a .pem file containing your internal root CA certificate, and Node will trust it on top of its built-in CA bundle.

Remark: this has to be a PEM-encoded certificate, not the binary .cer format Windows exports by default.

Export the internal CA certificate

On the machine hosting your self-hosted agent:

  • Open certlm.msc (Local Computer Certificates).
  • Go to:
    • Trusted Root Certification Authorities → Certificates, or
    • Intermediate Certification Authorities → Certificates
  • Find your internal CA's certificate.
  • Right-click → All Tasks → Export.
  • Choose:
    • No, do not export the private key
    • Base-64 encoded X.509 (.CER)
  • Save it as, for example: vlm-root-ca.cer
  • Rename it to vlm-root-ca.pem

Base-64 encoded X.509 is PEM format, so the rename is all you need. No conversion required.

Reference it in the pipeline YAML

Point NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS at the file:

trigger: none
pool:
  name: default
variables:
  NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS: 'd:\vlm-root.pem'
steps:
- task: RenovateMe@1
  inputs:
    renovateOptionsVersion: 'latest'

That's it. Renovate now validates the certificate chain against your internal CA and can talk to your internal Azure DevOps server without complaints.

More information

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Podman– Command execution failed with exit code 125

After updating WSL on one of the developer machines, Podman failed to work. When we took a look through Podman Desktop, we noticed that Podman had stopped running and returned the following error message: Error: Command execution failed with exit code 125 Here are the steps we tried to fix the issue: We started by running podman info to get some extra details on what could be wrong: >podman info OS: windows/amd64 provider: wsl version: 5.3.1 Cannot connect to Podman. Please verify your connection to the Linux system using `podman system connection list`, or try `podman machine init` and `podman machine start` to manage a new Linux VM Error: unable to connect to Podman socket: failed to connect: dial tcp 127.0.0.1:2655: connectex: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it. That makes sense as the podman VM was not running. Let’s check the VM: >podman machine list NAME         ...
Read more

Cache stampede: when our cache turned against us

While investigating some performance issues, we ran into an ASP.NET Core API that cached a fairly expensive aggregation query for 60 seconds. Under normal load, that was fine: one request rebuilds the cache, everyone else reads from it. Under peak load, dozens of requests would arrive in that same expiry window, all see a cache miss, and all fire the same expensive query in parallel. The database didn't like that. That was the moment when our caching layer stopped helping and started hurting. A burst of requests comes in at the same time, all miss the cache, and all go hammer the database or the downstream API at once. That's a cache stampede . The cache was supposed to protect our backend, and for a few hundred milliseconds it did the opposite. Why this happens IMemoryCache.GetOrCreate (and its async sibling) looks like it protects you, but it doesn't add any locking on its own. Look at the naive version: public async Task<Report> GetReportAsync(string key) ...
Read more

A complex system designed from scratch never works

A few years ago, I worked as an architect on a big mainframe rewrite. I still count it as one of my failures. Not because the technology was wrong, but because I couldn't convince the management team to simplify the approach. Years later, the organization is still struggling to get the new system up and running. I left the project at the time, because I couldn't put my name behind an approach that would take very long and cost a lot of money without a working system to show for it along the way. Gall’s Law That memory keeps coming back to me, because it's a textbook case of Gall's Law playing out in real life. Gall's Law , from John Gall's Systemantics , states it plainly: A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works, and it cannot be patched to make it work. You have to start over with a simple system that works. What does that mean in practice,...
Read more