CentOSLinuxTutorials

How To Install Free SSL Certificate for Nginx on CentOS 8

Install Free SSL Certificate for Nginx on CentOS 8

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install a free SSL Certificate for Nginx on CentOS 8. For those of you who didn’t know, Let’s Encrypt is a free open certificate authority (CA) that provides free certificates for websites and other services. The service is backed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Mozilla, Cisco Systems, and Akamai.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation Free SSL Certificate for Nginx on CentOS 8 server.

Prerequisites

  • A server running one of the following operating systems: CentOS 8.
  • It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
  • A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install Free SSL Certificate for Nginx on CentOS 8

Step 1. First, let’s start by ensuring your system is up-to-date.

dnf update

Step 2. Installing Certbot on CentOS 8.

Run these commands on the command line on the machine to install Certbot:

wget https://dl.eff.org/certbot-auto
sudo mv certbot-auto /usr/local/bin/certbot-auto
sudo chown root /usr/local/bin/certbot-auto
sudo chmod 0755 /usr/local/bin/certbot-auto

Then, run this command to get a certificate and have Certbot edit your Nginx configuration automatically:

sudo /usr/local/bin/certbot-auto --nginx

The result is like below:

Creating virtual environment...
Installing Python packages...
Installation succeeded.
Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log
Plugins selected: Authenticator nginx, Installer nginx
Enter email address (used for urgent renewal and security notices) (Enter 'c' to
cancel): your@email.com

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Please read the Terms of Service at
https://letsencrypt.org/documents/LE-SA-v1.2-November-15-2017.pdf. You must
agree in order to register with the ACME server at
https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
(A)gree/(C)ancel: A

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Would you be willing to share your email address with the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, a founding partner of the Let's Encrypt project and the non-profit
organization that develops Certbot? We'd like to send you email about our work
encrypting the web, EFF news, campaigns, and ways to support digital freedom.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
(Y)es/(N)o: Y

Which names would you like to activate HTTPS for?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
1: your-domain-a.com
2: your-domain-b.com
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Select the appropriate numbers separated by commas and/or spaces, or leave input
blank to select all options shown (Enter 'c' to cancel): 1
Obtaining a new certificate
Performing the following challenges:
http-01 challenge for your-domain-a.com
Waiting for verification...
Cleaning up challenges
Deploying Certificate to VirtualHost /etc/nginx/conf.d/your-domain-a.com.conf

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): 2
Redirecting all traffic on port 80 to ssl in /etc/nginx/conf.d/your-domain-a.com.conf

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Congratulations! You have successfully enabled https://your-domain-a.com

You should test your configuration at:
https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=your-domain-a.com
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

IMPORTANT NOTES:
 - Congratulations! Your certificate and chain have been saved at:
   /etc/letsencrypt/live/your-domain-a.com/fullchain.pem
   Your key file has been saved at:
   /etc/letsencrypt/live/your-domain-a.com/privkey.pem
   Your cert will expire on 2020-01-12. To obtain a new or tweaked
   version of this certificate in the future, simply run certbot-auto
   again with the "certonly" option. To non-interactively renew *all*
   of your certificates, run "certbot-auto 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

Step 3. Certbot Auto-Renew Cron Job.

Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates that will get expired after 90 days of installation and you must renew them before it gets expired. If you have installed certificates using Certbot then it must have already created a cron job to auto-renew certificates:

echo "0 0,12 * * * root python -c 'import random; import time; time.sleep(random.random() * 3600)' && /usr/local/bin/certbot-auto renew" | sudo tee -a /etc/crontab > /dev/null

Congratulations! You have successfully installed free SSL Certificates. Thanks for using this tutorial to install Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificates on CentOS 8 system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Let’s Encrypt website.

VPS Manage Service Offer
If you don’t have time to do all of this stuff, or if this is not your area of expertise, we offer a service to do “VPS Manage Service Offer”, starting from $10 (Paypal payment). Please contact us to get the best deal!

r00t

r00t is an experienced Linux enthusiast and technical writer with a passion for open-source software. With years of hands-on experience in various Linux distributions, r00t has developed a deep understanding of the Linux ecosystem and its powerful tools. He holds certifications in SCE and has contributed to several open-source projects. r00t is dedicated to sharing her knowledge and expertise through well-researched and informative articles, helping others navigate the world of Linux with confidence.
Back to top button