Install SSL certificates for free using letsencrypt on virtualmin GPL control panel

Posted on by sjaak

To be able to host websites with https capabilities, it is strongly recommended to use a certificate signed by a valid authority. Most companies charge somewhere between 4 and 400 Dollar/Euro for a signed SSL/TLS certificate. Then there are some free certificate authorities like StartSSL… But for not to long there now is a new player to the SSL game: Letsencrypt!

The upsides of letsencrypt are mainly that its 100% free and the biggest advantage it supports automated certificate signing!

Below a short but sweet tutorial to configure letsencrypt for certificate signing on a server with virtualmin GPL control panel.

If you are looking for a tutorial on how to setup your own webhosting server using virtualmin please see this tutorial

    1. Make a backup you fool!
    2. Update your  server
      – You can choose to do so by using virtualmin update manager or execute sudo yum update -y on Centos or sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -y on debian/ubuntu systems
    3. Install git
      – On Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install git
      – On Centos: sudo yum install git
    4. Clone letsencrypt
      git clone https://github.com/letsencrypt/letsencrypt (REMEMBER WHERE YOU CLONED IT you will need that later)
    5. First time run to set email address
      – Execute ./letsencrypt/letsencrypt-auto -m [email protected]
      – After executing the script as described above, you will be asked to select domains for which you want to generate a certificate PLEASE DESELECT ALL DOMAINS (if generated trough command line it might mess up your apache config)
      – It does not matter if the script fails or stops responding, you can exit the script using CTRL+C
    6. Login to webmin and navigate to Webmin>Webmin Configuration and click on the SSL Encryption button
      – Select the Let`s Encrpt tab and click the module configuration button
      –  Fill in the path for the letsencrypt auto command, in our case /root/letsencrypt/letsencrypt-auto and click save configuration
    7. Navigate  to virtualmin and navigate to the domain for which you would like to issue the certificate
      –  Click on edit virtual server
      – On the enabled features section make sure “enable SSL website” is selected and click on  save virtual server.
    8. Click on: server configuration> manage ssl certificates and select the letsencrypt tab
      –  Click “request certificate”
      –  PROFIT!

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sjaak

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