Here are some quick notes on how I installed letsencrypt certificates on a couple of my old Fedora servers. This is meant to get you started fairly quickly especially if you know how to install web servers on Linux systems. While there is a client already available for Fedora 23, I found that on older versions, the apache plugin for letsencrypt does not work. For instance, when you run the command:
./letsencrypt-auto --apache -d mydomainname.com, you get an error like:
The apache plugin is not working; there may be problems with your existing configuration.
The error was: NoInstallationError()
For earlier versions, you need to install the manual way i.e. generate a certificate. While that’s a few steps from the easy and automated promise of lets encrypt, you still can’t beat the price tag of Free!
Pull the sources for letsencrypt:
git clone https://github.com/letsencrypt/letsencrypt
Change to directory:
cd letsencrypt
Run the following command, and ofcourse replace the string mydomain.com with your domain:
./letsencrypt-auto certonly --standalone --agree-tos --email joe@mydomain.com -d mydomain.com
NOTE: For multiple domains, just add ‘-d mydomain.net’
Get help by running:
./letsencrypt-auto --help
If all goes well, you should see a congratulatory message, with the location of your free certificate chain! Use this in apache or nginx configuration
Keep in mind that the certificates are only vailid for three months, and you will need to do this again.