32.10 Obtaining an SSL Certificate

The certificate for a web site must be obtained from a Certificate Authority. A number of options are available at a range of prices. By far the best option, however, is to obtain a free certificate from Let’s Encrypt at the following URL:

https://letsencrypt.org/

The process of obtaining a certificate from Let’s Encrypt simply involves installing and running the Certbot tool. This tool will scan the Apache configuration files on the server and provides the option to generate certificates for any virtual hosts configured on the system. It will then generate the certificate and add virtual host entries to the Apache configuration specifically for the corresponding web sites.

Use the following steps to install the certbot tool on your Ubuntu system:

# apt update

# apt install software-properties-common

# add-apt-repository universe

# add-apt-repository ppa:certbot/certbot

# apt install certbot python-certbot-apache...