Setup SSL - Let's Encrypt Certbot
There's no reason to not setup an SSL certificate anymore. These instructions will setup an auto-refreshing SSL certificate using the Let's Encrypt Certbot.
Install Certbot
Certbot requires snap (ugh). This will setup snap and then install Certbot.
sudo dnf install mod_ssl mod_fcgid snapd
sudo systemctl enable --now snapd.socket
sudo snap install core; sudo snap refresh core
sudo ln -s /var/lib/snapd/snap /snap
sudo snap install --classic certbot
sudo ln -s /snap/bin/certbot /usr/bin/certbotIf the snap install command fails, just run it again. It will sometimes fail on the first attempt.
Install SSL Cert
This assumes you have setup apache to serve your site over http first.
sudo certbot --apache
You can also add a specific list of domains to request certificates for. I prefer to do this:
sudo certbot --apache -d www.mysite.com -d api.mysite.com
Sometimes this step may fail the first time as well. Give it a a little time and then try again. It may fail because your DNS is still propagating.
Setup Automatic Certificate Renewal
Open up the root crontab entry:
sudo vim /etc/crontab
Enter the following entry which will check your SSL certs twice daily and also make sure not to flood Let's Encrypt at the same time as everyone else.
# Twice daily check of Lets Encrypt SSL Cert
0 0,12 * * * root python3 -c 'import random; import time; time.sleep(random.random() * 3600)' && certbot renew -qIf you don't have python3 installed, you can do so with:
sudo dnf install python3
Areas for Improvement
This guide works but there are some areas for improvement in the future to lower the extra dependencies.
TODO:
- Use an alternate client instead of Certbot. For example: acme.sh
- This is more lightweight and removed the dependency on snap (ugh).
- Use $RANDOM and sleep in crontab to remove python3 dependency