{"id":680,"date":"2017-02-25T09:38:18","date_gmt":"2017-02-25T07:38:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/helia.ee\/koolitus\/?page_id=680"},"modified":"2017-03-20T00:27:15","modified_gmt":"2017-03-19T22:27:15","slug":"how-to-secure-apache-with-lets-encrypt-on-debian-8","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/helia.ee\/koolitus\/?page_id=680","title":{"rendered":"How To Secure Apache with Let’s Encrypt on Debian 8"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

How To Secure Apache with Let’s Encrypt on Debian 8<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
\n

Introduction<\/h3>\n

This tutorial will show you how to set up a TLS\/SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt<\/a> on a Debian 8 server running Apache as a web server. We will also cover how to automate the certificate renewal process using a cron job.<\/p>\n

SSL certificates are used within web servers to encrypt the traffic between the server and client, providing extra security for users accessing your application. Let’s Encrypt provides an easy way to obtain and install trusted certificates for free.<\/p>\n

Prerequisites<\/h2>\n

In order to complete this guide, you will need a Debian 8 server with a non-root sudo<\/code> user for administrative tasks. You can set up a user with the appropriate permissions by following our Debian 8 initial server setup guide<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You must own or control the registered domain name that you wish to use the certificate with. If you do not already have a registered domain name, you may register one with one of the many domain name registrars out there (e.g. Namecheap, GoDaddy, etc.).<\/p>\n

If you haven’t already, be sure to create an A Record<\/strong> that points your domain to the public IP address of your server (if you are using DigitalOcean’s DNS, you can follow this guide<\/a>). This is required because of how Let’s Encrypt validates that you own the domain it is issuing a certificate for. For example, if you want to obtain a certificate for example.com<\/code>, that domain must resolve to your server for the validation process to work. Our setup will use example.com<\/code> and www.example.com<\/code> as the domain names, so both DNS records are required<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

When you are ready to move on, log into your server using your sudo account.<\/p>\n

Step 1: Install Certbot, the Let’s Encrypt Client<\/h2>\n

The first step to using Let’s Encrypt to obtain an SSL certificate is to install the certbot<\/code> Let’s Encrypt client on your server.<\/p>\n

The certbot<\/code> package was not available when Debian 8 was released. To access the certbot<\/code> package, we will have to enable the Jessie backports repository on our server. This repository can be used to install more recent versions of software than the ones included in the stable repositories.<\/p>\n

Add the backports repository to your server by typing:<\/p>\n