In this short guide we have create a free Let's Encrypt wildcard certificate.
Before you Begin
We'll need a fresh installation of Ubuntu or Debian linux. The box doesn't need to b e publicly accessible as we will use DNS verification in the creation process.
Install Certbot and generate the certificate
We install the certbot package on the linux machine, then request the wildcard certificate, with DNS verification that require us to create a public TXT record in the domain's zone file. The process guides us through each step
# Install the Let’s Encrypt agent apt install certbot python-certbot-apache # Generate the certificate certbot certonly --manual --preferred-challenges dns -d *.alwayshotcafe.com
root@wildcard:~# certbot certonly --manual --preferred-challenges dns -d *.alwayshotcafe.com
Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log
Plugins selected: Authenticator manual, Installer None
Enter email address (used for urgent renewal and security notices) (Enter 'c' to
cancel): zsolt@opentechtips.com
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Please read the Terms of Service at
https://letsencrypt.org/documents/LE-SA-v1.2-November-15-2017.pdf. You must
agree in order to register with the ACME server at
https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory
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(A)gree/(C)ancel: A
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Would you be willing to share your email address with the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, a founding partner of the Let's Encrypt project and the non-profit
organization that develops Certbot? We'd like to send you email about our work
encrypting the web, EFF news, campaigns, and ways to support digital freedom.
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(Y)es/(N)o: N
Obtaining a new certificate
Performing the following challenges:
dns-01 challenge for alwayshotcafe.com
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NOTE: The IP of this machine will be publicly logged as having requested this
certificate. If you're running certbot in manual mode on a machine that is not
your server, please ensure you're okay with that.
Are you OK with your IP being logged?
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(Y)es/(N)o: Y
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Please deploy a DNS TXT record under the name
_acme-challenge.alwayshotcafe.com with the following value:
kquoylyaMHZWxcu6JwT_BiJSmG_yrxr3-qgzNXQr0MA
Before continuing, verify the record is deployed.
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Press Enter to Continue
As requested, we add the TXT record to our public DNS file
Note: we need to wait a few minutes before we proceed to allow time for DNS propagation
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Please deploy a DNS TXT record under the name
_acme-challenge.alwayshotcafe.com with the following value:
kquoylyaMHZWxcu6JwT_BiJSmG_yrxr3-qgzNXQr0MA
Before continuing, verify the record is deployed.
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Press Enter to Continue
Waiting for verification...
Cleaning up challenges
IMPORTANT NOTES:
- Congratulations! Your certificate and chain have been saved at:
/etc/letsencrypt/live/alwayshotcafe.com/fullchain.pem
Your key file has been saved at:
/etc/letsencrypt/live/alwayshotcafe.com/privkey.pem
Your cert will expire on 2020-08-03. To obtain a new or tweaked
version of this certificate in the future, simply run certbot
again. To non-interactively renew *all* of your certificates, run
"certbot renew"
- Your account credentials have been saved in your Certbot
configuration directory at /etc/letsencrypt. You should make a
secure backup of this folder now. This configuration directory will
also contain certificates and private keys obtained by Certbot so
making regular backups of this folder is ideal.
- If you like Certbot, please consider supporting our work by:
Donating to ISRG / Let's Encrypt: https://letsencrypt.org/donate
Donating to EFF: https://eff.org/donate-le
root@wildcard:~#
Check the certificate files
Here we have our new wildcard certificate. We can use it on this server straight, or export it in a PFX format to be imported on a separate box as needed.
# Export PFX into /tmp/wildcard.pfx openssl pkcs12 -export -out /tmp/wildcard.pfx -inkey privkey.pem -in cert.pem -certfile chain.pem
Full guide of PFX export here
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