Install Let’s Encrypt to Create SSL Certificates on Ubuntu

(Linode: Install Let’s Encrypt to Create SSL Certificates)
[Update 2018 03 06: You might want to look at Certbot]

Before You Begin

1. Check for updates
   sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
2. Check if git is installed
   which git
   If not install git
   sudo apt-get install git
Password
y
3. Open a port for Let’s Encrypt
   sudo ufw allow 443
   [Update 2018 03 06: (you might need to allow port 80 as well for some reason)]

Install Let’s Encrypt

1. Download and install Let’s Encrypt
   sudo git clone https://github.com/letsencrypt/letsencrypt /opt/letsencrypt
2. Navigate to the new /opt/letsencrypt directory:
   cd /opt/letsencrypt

Create an SSL Certificate

1. Run Let’s Encrypt including each domain to be covered with a -d
   • sudo -H ./letsencrypt-auto certonly --standalone -d example.com -d www.example.com
   • password
   • a good email address
   • Agree
   • Success!
     IMPORTANT NOTES:
- Congratulations! Your certificate and chain have been saved at/etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem. Your cert will expire on 2017-xx-xx. To obtain a new or tweaked version of this certificate in the future, simply run letsencrypt-auto again. To non-interactively renew *all* of your certificates, run "letsencrypt-auto renew"
- 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
2. Setup auto renewals of certificates
   • sudo crontab -e
   • First run select nano as editor
   • Add the line to the bottom of the file to run at 02:30 every Monday, pausing nginx to allow access to port 443 as required.
     30 2 * * 1 /opt/letsencrypt/letsencrypt-auto renew --quiet --pre-hook "sudo service nginx stop" --post-hook "sudo service nginx start"
     (I HAVEN’T confirmed this is working yet, but it should be)

Mini series

1. Setting up a server at Linode
2. Install Let’s Encrypt to Create SSL Certificates on Ubuntu
3. Setting up MongoDB on Ubuntu
4. Setting up nginx on Ubuntu for parse-server
5. Setting up parse-server on Ubuntu