How To Install SSL Certificate on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install SSL Certificate on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, an SSL certificate is a digital certificate that is used to establish a secure, encrypted connection between a web server and a web browser. It is issued by a certification authority (CA) and contains information about the identity of the website and the organization that operates it. SSL certificates are primarily used to protect sensitive information that is transmitted over the internet, such as credit card numbers, login credentials, and other personal information.

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 the step-by-step installation of the SSL Certificate on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 22.04, 20.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• An active internet connection. You’ll need an internet connection to download the necessary packages and dependencies for Certbot.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• 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 SSL certificate on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish

Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt commands in the terminal.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install wget apt-transport-https gnupg2 software-properties-common

Step 2. Installing Certbot.

Run the following command to install the Certbot package:

sudo snap install core
sudo snap refresh core
sudo snap install --classic certbot

For additional resources on installing Snap, read the post below:

• How to install Snap on Ubuntu Linux √

Step 3. Installing the SSL certificate on Ubuntu 22.04.

After Certbot is installed, you can obtain an SSL certificate for your domain by running the following command in the terminal:

• If you’re using Nginx:

sudo certbot --nginx

• If you’re using Apache:

sudo certbot --apache

Follow the prompts to complete the installation process. You will be asked to enter your email address, agree to the terms of service, and select which domains you want to secure with SSL.

Step 4. Renew the SSL Certificate.

Once your SSL certificate is obtained and installed, you will need to renew it before it expires. Certbot makes this process easy by automatically renewing your SSL certificate before it expires. You can configure Certbot to automatically renew your SSL certificate by running the following command in the terminal:

sudo certbot renew --dry-run

Step 4. Configure Firewall.

Meanwhile, you need to make sure that your firewall is configured to allow traffic on HTTP (80) and HTTPS (443) ports. Nginx registers itself as a service with ufw :

sudo ufw allow in "Nginx Full"
sudo ufw allow in "Apache Full"

Congratulations! You have successfully installed the SSL certificate. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing a free SSL Certificate on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Certbot website.