Configuring Let's Encrypt with Apache on Ubuntu Bionic

Reviewed on 26 March 2024 • Published on 23 May 2019

compute
Let's-Encrypt
Apache
Ubuntu-Bionic
SSL-certificates

Let’s Encrypt is a certificate authority providing free SSL certificates. The creation, validation, and installation is automated with certbot — all major browsers trust certificates issued by Let’s Encrypt.

In this tutorial, you will discover how to secure your Apache web server on a Scaleway Instance running Ubuntu Linux. We will walk you through the process of setting up a website on Apache and obtaining a Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate using certbot. Let’s dive in and make your web presence safer and more trustworthy.

Before you start

To complete the actions presented below, you must have:

A Scaleway account logged into the console
Owner status or IAM permissions allowing you to perform actions in the intended Organization
An SSH key
An Instance
A domain name pointing towards your Instance’s IP address (via an A or AAAA record)
sudo privileges or access to the root user

Installing Apache

Connect to your Instance via SSH, and update the software already installed:
```
apt update
apt upgrade -y
```

Install the Apache web server:

apt install apache2

Create a directory for the website. In this tutorial we use myweb.example.com. Replace it with your domain name whenever you see it:

mkdir -p /var/www/html/myweb.example.com/public_html

Create an index page for the website by running the following command:

nano /var/www/html/myweb.example.com/public_html/index.html

Then copy the following content into the file, save it and exit nano:

<html>
  <head>
    <title>myweb.example.com</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>New Website</h1>
    <p>This is the new website of myweb.exaple.com</p>
  </body>
</html>

Create a configuration file for the website, by making a copy of the default configuration:

cp /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf /etc/apache2/sites-available/myweb.example.com.conf

Open the file in a text editor:

nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/myweb.example.com.conf

E dit the following lines to match your configuration, add them to the file, save it and exit the editor:

ServerAdmin webmaster@myweb.example.com
ServerName myweb.example.com
ServerAlias www.myweb.example.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/myweb.example.com/public_html

Once edited the file should look like this example:

Activate the new site:

a2ensite myweb.example.com

Reload the Apache configuration to enable the new site:

systemctl reload apache2.service

Installing Certbot

Install Certbot via apt:

apt install certbot python3-certbot-apache -y

Running Certbot

Run Certbot to request a certificate for the domain name:
```
certbot --apache
```
Certbot will ask you a series of questions:
- Firstly, Certbot asks for your email address. Enter it and press Enter on your keyboard.
- You will then be asked to agree to the terms of service. Do so by pressing Y.
- Decide if you want to share your email address with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Press Y for yes or N for no.
- Next, you will be asked for which domains you want to activate SSL. Select the appropriate numbers separated by commas and/or spaces, or leave input blank to select all options shown.
- Certbot asks if all traffic should be forced to HTTPS. Type 1 for no or 2 for yes.
- The certificate is requested and the following message appears once it has been obtained:
```
Congratulations! You have successfully enabled https://myweb.example.com
You should test your configuration at:
https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=myweb.example.com
```
Verify the certificate by opening your site in a web browser:

The small padlock icon indicates that the connection to your Instance is now encrypted.