Let's Encrypt Nginx setup with Ansible

Ansible Let's Encrypt Nginx setup

Ansible playbook to setup HTTPS using Let's encrypt on nginx.

The Ansible playbook installs everything needed to serve static files from a nginx server over HTTPS.
The server pass A rating on [SSL Labs](https://www.ssllabs.com/).

To use:
 1. Install [Ansible](https://www.ansible.com/)
 2. Setup an Ubuntu 16.04 server accessible over ssh
 3. Create `/etc/ansible/hosts` according to template below and change example.com to your domain
 4. Copy the rest of the files to an empty directory (`playbook.yml` in the root of that folder and the rest in the `templates` subfolder)
 5. Run `ansible-playbook playbook.yml`
 6. Copy your (static HTML) code to `/var/www/example.com` (`example.com` replaced with your domain)
 7. Restart nginx (`systemctl restart nginx`)

etc ansible hosts

[letsencrypt]
example.com ansible_user=root [email protected] domain_name=example.com

playbook.yml

---
- hosts: letsencrypt
  become: true
  gather_facts: no

  pre_tasks:
    - raw: apt-get install -y python-simplejson

  tasks:
    - name: Upgrade system
      apt: upgrade=dist update_cache=yes

    - name: Install nginx
      apt: name=nginx state=latest

    - name: install letsencrypt
      apt: name=letsencrypt state=latest

    - name: create letsencrypt directory
      file: name=/var/www/letsencrypt state=directory

    - name: Remove default nginx config
      file: name=/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default state=absent

    - name: Install system nginx config
      template:
        src: templates/nginx.conf.j2
        dest: /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

    - name: Install nginx site for letsencrypt requests
      template:
        src: templates/nginx-http.j2
        dest: /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/http

    - name: Reload nginx to activate letsencrypt site
      service: name=nginx state=restarted

    - name: Create letsencrypt certificate
      shell: letsencrypt certonly -n --webroot -w /var/www/letsencrypt -m {{ letsencrypt_email }} --agree-tos -d {{ domain_name }}
      args:
        creates: /etc/letsencrypt/live/{{ domain_name }}

    - name: Generate dhparams
      shell: openssl dhparam -out /etc/nginx/dhparams.pem 2048
      args:
        creates: /etc/nginx/dhparams.pem

    - name: Install nginx site for specified site
      template:
        src: templates/nginx-le.j2
        dest: /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/le

    - name: Reload nginx to activate specified site
      service: name=nginx state=restarted

    - name: Add letsencrypt cronjob for cert renewal
      cron:
        name: letsencrypt_renewal
        special_time: weekly
        job: letsencrypt --renew certonly -n --webroot -w /var/www/letsencrypt -m {{ letsencrypt_email }} --agree-tos -d {{ domain_name }} && service nginx reload

templates nginx-http.j2

server_tokens off;

server {
    listen 80 default_server;
    server_name {{ domain_name }};

    location /.well-known/acme-challenge {
        root /var/www/letsencrypt;
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }

    location / {
        rewrite ^ https://{{ domain_name }}$request_uri? permanent;
    }
}

templates nginx-le.j2

add_header X-Frame-Options SAMEORIGIN;
add_header X-Content-Type-Options nosniff;
add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block";
add_header Content-Security-Policy "default-src 'self'; script-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline' 'unsafe-eval' https://www.google-analytics.com; img-src 'self' data: https://www.google-analytics.com; style-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline'; font-src 'self'; frame-src 'none'; object-src 'none'";


# HTTPS server
#
server {
    listen 443 ssl default deferred;
    server_name {{ domain_name }};

    ssl on;
    ssl_certificate         /etc/letsencrypt/live/{{ domain_name }}/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key     /etc/letsencrypt/live/{{ domain_name }}/privkey.pem;
    ssl_trusted_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/{{ domain_name }}/fullchain.pem;

    ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:50m;
    ssl_session_timeout 5m;
    ssl_stapling on;
    ssl_stapling_verify on;

    ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
    ssl_ciphers "ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:AES256-GCM-SHA384:AES128-GCM-SHA256:AES256-SHA256:AES128-SHA256:AES256-SHA:AES128-SHA:DES-CBC3-SHA:HIGH:!aNULL:!eNULL:!EXPORT:!DES:!MD5:!PSK:!RC4";

    ssl_dhparam /etc/nginx/dhparams.pem;
    ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;

    root /var/www/{{ domain_name }};
    index index.html index.htm;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }
}

templates nginx.conf

user www-data;
worker_processes 4;
pid /run/nginx.pid;

events {
    worker_connections 768;
}

http {

    sendfile on;
    tcp_nopush on;
    tcp_nodelay on;
    keepalive_timeout 65;
    types_hash_max_size 2048;
    include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
    default_type application/octet-stream;

    access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
    error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;

    gzip on;
    gzip_disable "msie6";

    include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
    include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
}

GREAT work, thanks a lot)
Just note for whom it failed:
On Ubuntu you need to use certbot instead letsencrypt cli
And no need to use 2 websites to generate a certificate, it worked for me always with one, even when it's proxy and doesn't have no working directory to pass acme validation.

Also: letsencrypt made legacy one of methods for domains verification so make sure you're using certbot v0.28 and above

Happy coding)

Can you share the command need to run in playbook for certbot (i'm using ubuntu)

Certbot instructions here:
https://certbot.eff.org/lets-encrypt/ubuntubionic-nginx

This is amazing. Worked without any major modifications on ubuntu 19.10 on a raspberry pi.
I did the following changes

• Changed hosts to localhost
• Removed inventory file
• Renamed the template files to fix their names after the download
• Modified the SSL config to be a reverse proxy
• Moved variables from inventory file into vars in the playbook
• ran the playbook with ansible-playbook playbook.yml

My playbook:

---
- hosts: localhost
  become: true
  gather_facts: no
  vars:
    domain_name: www.example.com
    letsencrypt_email: [email protected]
  tasks:
    - name: Install nginx
      apt:
        name: nginx
        state: latest
    - name: install letsencrypt
      apt:
        name: letsencrypt
        state: latest
    - name: create letsencrypt directory
      file:
        name: /var/www/letsencrypt
        state: directory
    - name: Remove default nginx config
      file: 
        name: /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
        state: absent
    - name: Install system nginx config
      template:
        src: nginx.conf.j2
        dest: /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
    - name: Install nginx site for letsencrypt requests
      template:
        src: nginx-http.j2
        dest: /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/http
    - name: Reload nginx to activate letsencrypt site
      service:
        name: nginx
        state: restarted
    - name: Create letsencrypt certificate
      shell: letsencrypt certonly -n --webroot -w /var/www/letsencrypt -m {{ letsencrypt_email }} --agree-tos -d {{ domain_name }}
      args:
        creates: /etc/letsencrypt/live/{{ domain_name }}
    - name: Generate dhparams
      shell: openssl dhparam -out /etc/nginx/dhparams.pem 2048
      args:
        creates: /etc/nginx/dhparams.pem
    - name: Install nginx site for specified site
      template:
        src: nginx-le.j2
        dest: /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/le
    - name: Reload nginx to activate specified site
      service: name=nginx state=restarted
    - name: Add letsencrypt cronjob for cert renewal
      cron:
        name: letsencrypt_renewal
        special_time: weekly
        job: letsencrypt --renew certonly -n --webroot -w /var/www/letsencrypt -m {{ letsencrypt_email }} --agree-tos -d {{ domain_name }} && service nginx reload

@diablozzq this is great. what if need to handle 2 sub domains

example: domain_name: aaa.example.com and domain_name_2: bbbb.example.com

@diablozzq this is great. what if need to handle 2 sub domains

example: domain_name: aaa.example.com and domain_name_2: bbbb.example.com

you can do like this: -d www.aname.com -d api.aname.com -d api2.aname.com

also you can use wildcard way

Thanks for this!

FYI, on my Ubuntu 16.04.6 server with certbot 0.27.0, I had to change the cronjob from

job: letsencrypt --renew certonly -n --webroot -w /var/www/letsencrypt -m {{ letsencrypt_email }} --agree-tos -d {{ domain_name }} && service nginx reload

to

job: letsencrypt --renew-by-default certonly -n --webroot -w /var/www/letsencrypt -m {{ letsencrypt_email }} --agree-tos -d {{ domain_name }} && service nginx reload

Thank you man! This saved me hours!

pre_tasks:
- raw: apt-get install -y python-simplejson

for Gentoo replace

pre_tasks:
- raw: emerge -v dev-python/simplejson

thanks man! amazing work.

Great stuff man, thanks a lot!

why u not using proxy nginx with buffer?

thanks for this! nowadays python-simplejson is python3-simplejson (tested on debian 11)

--renew-by-default

thanks for the tip