Creating a Let’s Encrypt SSL/TLS Certificate on Linux using Certbot

Date: January 12, 2023 Posted by: Sixvel In: Linux, security - 293 Views

How to create lets encrypt certificate using linux

To create a Let’s Encrypt certificate on Linux, you can use the Certbot tool, which is a command-line utility for obtaining and renewing SSL/TLS certificates. Here’s an example of how to use Certbot to create a certificate for a website hosted on Apache:

Install Certbot by running the following command in your terminal:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install certbot python3-certbot-apache

Run certbot to obtain a certificate:

sudo certbot --apache -d example.com -d www.example.com

This command tells Certbot to use the Apache plugin and to request a certificate for the domain example.com and www.example.com. Certbot will automatically configure Apache to use the new certificate.

Certbot will prompt you to enter your email address and agree to the terms of service, then it will verify that you have control over the domains you specified by creating a temporary file in the .well-known/acme-challenge/ directory on your website. Once that verification is complete, Certbot will provide you with the location of the new certificate files.

To automatically renew your certificate before it expires, you can set up a cronjob by running

sudo crontab -e

and add the following line to the file, which will run the certbot renew command every week

@weekly certbot renew

It’s important to note that, the above process is just an example, there are other ways to install certbot and other ways to configure the certbot and Apache. This is a general guide, you should refer to official certbot documentation for more detailed and specific instructions based on your use case.

Tags: #LetEncrypt, #SSL_TLS_Certificate, #LinuxSecurity, #Certbot, #ApacheHTTPS, #DomainVerification, #AutomaticCertRenewal, #WebsiteEncryption, #Cronjob, #OnlineSecurity