Installing Let's Encrypt with Cerbot on DigitalOcean & ServerPilot

.htaccess

## Redirect all HTTP and www to HTTPS
RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.*)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%1/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteRule ^/?(.*) https://%{SERVER_NAME}/$1 [R,L]

letsencrypt.md

Let's Encrypt

SSH as root into the server

ssh root@SERVER_IP_ADDRESS

Install Certbot

wget https://dl.eff.org/certbot-auto

chmod a+x certbot-auto

Stop NGINX

service nginx-sp stop

Run the certbot-auto Script

./certbot-auto certonly --standalone -d DOMAIN_NAME.com -d www.DOMAIN_NAME.com

The first time you run this command the process will take a few minutes, after it's finished installing, follow on screen instructions and you should get a message similar to:

Congratulations! Your certificate and chain have been saved at /etc/letsencrypt/live/DOMAIN_NAME.com/fullchain.pem.

Add SSL config file

APP_NAME = ServerPilot App Name (eg serverpilot/apps/myapp) DOMAIN_NAME = Domain name (eg myawesomesite.com)

nano /etc/nginx-sp/vhosts.d/APP_NAME.ssl.conf

NOTE: The filename should match the serverpilot app name. Another way to know is to see what ever letsencrypt named what the files here /etc/nginx-sp/vhosts.d/APP_NAME.conf

server {
  listen 443 ssl http2;
  listen [::]:443 ssl http2;
  server_name DOMAIN_NAME.com www.DOMAIN_NAME.com;

  ssl on;

  # LetsEncrypt Certs
  ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/DOMAIN_NAME.com/fullchain.pem;
  ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/DOMAIN_NAME.com/privkey.pem;

  # Verify Chain of Trust of OCSP Repsonse
  # http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_ssl_module.html
  ssl_trusted_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/DOMAIN_NAME.com/chain.pem;

  # Secure SSL protocols and ciphers
  ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
  ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
  ssl_ciphers 'ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-DSS-AES128-GCM-SHA256:kEDH+AESGCM:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:DHE-DSS-AES128-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA256:DHE-DSS-AES256-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:AES128-GCM-SHA256:AES256-GCM-SHA384:AES128-SHA256:AES256-SHA256:AES128-SHA:AES256-SHA:AES:CAMELLIA:DES-CBC3-SHA:!aNULL:!eNULL:!EXPORT:!DES:!RC4:!MD5:!PSK:!aECDH:!EDH-DSS-DES-CBC3-SHA:!EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:!KRB5-DES-CBC3-SHA';
  ssl_session_timeout 1d;
  ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:50m;

  # OCSP Stapling
  ssl_stapling on;
  ssl_stapling_verify on;
  
  # Strict Transport Security
  # https://www.chromium.org/hsts
  add_header Strict-Transport-Security max-age=15768000;

  root   /srv/users/serverpilot/apps/APP_NAME/public;

  access_log  /srv/users/serverpilot/log/APP_NAME/APP_NAME_nginx.access.log  main;
  error_log  /srv/users/serverpilot/log/APP_NAME/APP_NAME_nginx.error.log;

   # Proxy Set
  proxy_set_header Host $host;
  proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
  proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
  proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-SSL on;
  proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
  
   # Includes
  include /etc/nginx-sp/vhosts.d/APP_NAME.d/*.nonssl_conf;
  include /etc/nginx-sp/vhosts.d/APP_NAME.d/*.conf;
}

Start NGINX

service nginx-sp start

Auto Renewing

Add crontab

crontab -e

# letsencrypt-auto renew command every Monday at 2:30 am
30 2 * * 1 ./letsencrypt/certbot-auto renew --pre-hook "service nginx-sp stop" --post-hook "service nginx-sp start" >> /var/log/letsencrypt-renew.log

Checking if a cert needs to be renewed

./certbot-auto renew

Adding a new subdomain to certs

certbot-auto certonly --standalone -d domain.com -d www.domain.com -d sub.domain.com -d sub2.domain.com --expand

Troubleshooting

Job for nginx-sp.service failed because the control process exited with error code. See "systemctl status nginx-sp.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.

Might indicate a typo in your APP_NAME.ssl.conf config file. Example DOMAIN_NAME.com.com would break the service nginx-sp start process. Having a domain name that doesn't match one in your added domains would also break the start process.