How to: Install Let's Encrypt on Ubuntu Linux VPS to Create SSL Certificates

Let's Encrypt is a free, automated, and open certificate authority (CA). It is a service provided by the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG). It gives people the digital certificates they need in order to enable HTTPS (SSL/TLS) for websites, for free. Let's Encrypt is free, automatic, secure, and open.

  How to Install Let's Encrypt on Ubuntu Linux VPS to Create SSL Certificates

Downloading and Installing Let's Encrypt

1. Log into your Ubuntu VPS and update the server's packages

apt-get update & sudo apt-get upgrade

2. Install the GIT package

apt-get install git

3. Download a clone of Let's Encrypt from the GitHub repository. It is common practice to install third-party packages to /opt, so let's install it there

git clone https://github.com/letsencrypt/letsencrypt /opt/letsencrypt

4. Navigate to the new /opt/letsencrypt directory

cd /opt/letsencrypt

Creating an SSL Certificate

1. Run Let's Encrypt for your domain requiring a certificate

./letsencrypt-auto certonly --standalone -d example.com -d www.example.com

2. Specify an email address to regain control of a lost certificate and receive urgent security notices

3. Agree to the Terms of Service

4. If everything worked properly, you should receive a message similar to the following

IMPORTANT NOTES:
- If you lose your account credentials, you can recover them through
  e-mails sent to [email protected].
- Congratulations! Your certificate and chain have been saved at
  /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem. Your
  cert will expire on 2016-03-31. To obtain a new version of the
  certificate in the future, simply run Let's Encrypt again.
- Your account credentials have been saved in your Let's Encrypt
  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 Let's
  Encrypt, so making regular backups of this folder is ideal.
- If you like Let's Encrypt, please consider supporting our work by

  Donating to ISRG / Let's Encrypt:   https://letsencrypt.org/donate
  Donating to EFF:                    https://eff.org/donate-le

Now that you have installed Let's Encrypt and obtained SSL certificates, you can configure packages that support commercial or self-signed SSL certificates to use them.

Let's Encrypt Community Support

Let's Encrypt Documentation

Let's Encrypt FAQ