The first step to using Let's Encrypt to obtain an SSL certificate is to install the Certbot software on your server.
Certbot is in very active development, so the Certbot packages provided by Ubuntu tend to be outdated. However, the Certbot developers maintain a Ubuntu software repository with up-to-date versions, so we'll use that repository instead.
First, add the repository.
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:certbot/certbot
You'll need to press ENTER to accept. Then, update the package list to pick up the new repository's package information.
$ sudo apt-get update
And finally, install Certbot's Nginx package with apt-get.
$ sudo apt-get install python-certbot-nginx
Certbot is now ready to use, but in order for it to configure SSL for Nginx, we need to verify some of Nginx's configuration.
Certbot can automatically configure SSL for Nginx, but it needs to be able to find the correct server block in your config. It does this by looking for a server_name directive that matches the domain you're requesting a certificate for.
If you're starting out with a fresh Nginx install, you can update the default config file. Open it with nano or your favorite text editor.
$ sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default
Find the existing server_name line and replace the underscore, _, with your domain name:
| /etc/nginx/sites-available/default |
|---|
| server_name example.com www.example.com; |
Save the file and quit your editor.
Then, verify the syntax of your configuration edits.
$ sudo nginx -t
If you get any errors, reopen the file and check for typos, then test it again.
Once your configuration's syntax is correct, reload Nginx to load the new configuration.
$ sudo systemctl reoad nginx
Certbot will now be able to find the correct server block and update it. Next, we'll update our firewall to allow HTTPS traffic.
If you have the ufw firewall enabled, as recommended by the prerequisite guides, you'll need to adjust the settings to allow for HTTPS traffic. Luckily, Nginx registers a few profiles with ufw upon installation.
You can see the current setting by typing:
$ sudo ufw status
It will probably look like this, meaning that only HTTP traffic is allowed to the web server:
Output
Status: active
To Action From
-- ------ ----
OpenSSH ALLOW Anywhere
Nginx HTTP ALLOW Anywhere
OpenSSH (v6) ALLOW Anywhere (v6)
Nginx HTTP (v6) ALLOW Anywhere (v6)
To additionally let in HTTPS traffic, we can allow the Nginx Full profile and then delete the redundant Nginx HTTP profile allowance:
$ sudo ufw allow 'Nginx Full'
$ sudo ufw delete allow 'Nginx HTTP'
Your status should look like this now:
$ sudo ufw status
Output
Status: active
To Action From
-- ------ ----
OpenSSH ALLOW Anywhere
Nginx Full ALLOW Anywhere
OpenSSH (v6) ALLOW Anywhere (v6)
Nginx Full (v6) ALLOW Anywhere (v6)
We're now ready to run Certbot and fetch our certificates.
Certbot provides a variety of ways to obtain SSL certificates, through various plugins. The Nginx plugin will take care of reconfiguring Nginx and reloading the config whenever necessary:
$ sudo certbot --nginx -d example.com -d www.example.com
This runs certbot with the --nginx plugin, using -d to specify the names we'd like the certificate to be valid for.
If this is your first time running certbot, you will be prompted to enter an email address and agree to the terms of service. After doing so, certbot will communicate with the Let's Encrypt server, then run a challenge to verify that you control the domain you're requesting a certificate for.
If that's successful, certbot will ask how you'd like to configure your HTTPS settings.
Output
Please choose whether or not to redirect HTTP traffic to HTTPS, removing HTTP access.
--------------------------------------------
1: No redirect - Make no further changes to the webserver configuration.
2: Redirect - Make all requests redirect to secure HTTPS access. Choose this for
new sites, or if you're confident your site works on HTTPS. You can undo this
change by editing your web server's configuration.
--------------------------------------------
Select the appropriate number [1-2] then [enter] (press 'c' to cancel):
Select your choice then hit ENTER. The configuration will be updated, and Nginx will reload to pick up the new settings. certbot will wrap up with a message telling you the process was successful and where your certificates are stored:
Output
IMPORTANT NOTES:
- Congratulations! Your certificate and chain have been saved at
/etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem. Your cert will
expire on 2017-10-23. To obtain a new or tweaked version of this
certificate in the future, simply run certbot again with the
"certonly" option. To non-interactively renew *all* of your
certificates, run "certbot renew"
- Your account credentials have been saved in your Certbot
configuration directory at /etc/letsencrypt. You should make a
secure backup of this folder now. This configuration directory will
also contain certificates and private keys obtained by Certbot so
making regular backups of this folder is ideal.
- If you like Certbot, please consider supporting our work by:
Donating to ISRG / Let's Encrypt: https://letsencrypt.org/donate
Donating to EFF: https://eff.org/donate-le
Your certificates are downloaded, installed, and loaded. Try reloading your website using https:// and notice your browser's security indicator. It should indicate that the site is properly secured, usually with a green lock icon. If you test your server using the SSL Labs Server Test , it will get an A grade.
Let's finish by testing the renewal process.
Let's Encrypt's certificates are only valid for ninety days. This is to encourage users to automate their certificate renewal process. The certbot package we installed takes care of this for us by running ‘certbot renew’ twice a day via a systemd timer. On non-systemd distributions this functionality is provided by a script placed in /etc/cron.d. This task runs twice a day and will renew any certificate that's within thirty days of expiration.
To test the renewal process, you can do a dry run with certbot:
$ sudo certbot renew --dry-run
If you see no errors, you're all set. When necessary, Certbot will renew your certificates and reload Nginx to pick up the changes. If the automated renewal process ever fails, Let’s Encrypt will send a message to the email you specified, warning you when your certificate is about to expire.