Installs and configures Certbot (for Let's Encrypt).
If installing from source, Git is required. You can install Git using the geerlingguy.git
role.
If installing from pip, pip is required.
Generally, installing from source (see section Source Installation from Git
) leads to a better experience using Certbot and Let's Encrypt, especially if you're using an older OS release.
The variable certbot_install_from_source
controls whether to install Certbot from Git or package management. The latter is the default, so the variable defaults to no
.
The variable certbot_config_file_options
defaults to an empty dictionary but can be used to configure global options for Certbot, which will go into /etc/letsencrypt/cli.ini
.
certbot_auto_renew: true
certbot_auto_renew_hour: 3
certbot_auto_renew_minute: 30
By default, this role configures a cron job to run under the provided user account at the given hour and minute, every day. The defaults run certbot renew
(or certbot-auto renew
) via cron every day at 03:30:00 by the user you use in your Ansible playbook. It's preferred that you set a custom user/hour/minute so the renewal is during a low-traffic period and done by a non-root user account.
Currently there is one built-in method for generating new certificates using this role: standalone
. Other methods (e.g. using nginx or apache and a webroot) may be added in the future.
For a complete example: see the fully functional test playbook in tests/test-standalone-nginx-aws.yml.
certbot_create_if_missing: no
certbot_create_method: standalone
Set certbot_create_if_missing
to yes
or True
to let this role generate certs. Set the method used for generating certs with the certbot_create_method
variable—current allowed values include: standalone
.
certbot_admin_email: [email protected]
The email address used to agree to Let's Encrypt's TOS and subscribe to cert-related notifications. This should be customized and set to an email address that you or your organization regularly monitors.
certbot_certs: []
# - email: [email protected]
# domains:
# - example1.com
# - example2.com
# - domains:
# - example3.com
A list of domains (and other data) for which certs should be generated. You can add an email
key to any list item to override the certbot_admin_email
.
certbot_create_command: "{{ certbot_script }} certonly --standalone --noninteractive --agree-tos --email {{ cert_item.email | default(certbot_admin_email) }} -d {{ cert_item.domains | join(',') }}"
The certbot_create_command
defines the command used to generate the cert.
certbot_create_standalone_stop_services:
- nginx
Services that should be stopped while certbot
runs it's own standalone server on ports 80 and 443. If you're running Apache, set this to apache2
(Ubuntu), or httpd
(RHEL), or if you have Nginx on port 443 and something else on port 80 (e.g. Varnish, a Java app, or something else), add it to the list so it is stopped when the certificate is generated.
These services will only be stopped the first time a new cert is generated.
certbot_install: 'pip'
# or certbot_install: 'pip3'
The resulting certbot program will live in /usr/local/bin/certbot
You can install Certbot from it's Git source repository if desired. This might be useful in several cases, but especially when older distributions don't have Certbot packages available (e.g. CentOS < 7, Ubuntu < 16.10 and Debian < 8).
certbot_install: "source"
certbot_repo: https://github.com/certbot/certbot.git
certbot_version: master
certbot_keep_updated: yes
Certbot Git repository options. To install from source, set certbot_install_from_source
to yes
. This clones the configured certbot_repo
, respecting the certbot_version
setting. If certbot_keep_updated
is set to yes
, the repository is updated every time this role runs.
certbot_dir: /opt/certbot
The directory inside which Certbot will be cloned.
None.
- hosts: servers
vars:
certbot_config_file_options:
rsa-key-size: 4096
certbot_auto_renew_minute: 20
certbot_auto_renew_hour: 5
roles:
- geerlingguy.certbot
See other examples in the tests/
directory.
Note: You can have this role automatically generate certificates; see the "Automatic Certificate Generation" documentation above.
You can manually create certificates using the certbot
(or certbot-auto
) script (use letsencrypt
on Ubuntu 16.04, or use /opt/certbot/certbot-auto
if installing from source/Git. Here are some example commands to configure certificates with Certbot:
# Automatically add certs for all Apache virtualhosts (use with caution!).
certbot --apache
# Generate certs, but don't modify Apache configuration (safer).
certbot --apache certonly
If you want to fully automate the process of adding a new certificate, but don't want to use this role's built in functionality, you can do so using the command line options to register, accept the terms of service, and then generate a cert using the standalone server:
- Make sure any services listening on ports 80 and 443 (Apache, Nginx, Varnish, etc.) are stopped.
- Register with something like
certbot register --agree-tos --email [[email protected]]
- Note: You won't need to do this step in the future, when generating additional certs on the same server. - Generate a cert for a domain whose DNS points to this server:
certbot certonly --noninteractive --standalone -d example.com -d www.example.com
- Re-start whatever was listening on ports 80 and 443 before.
- Update your webserver's virtualhost TLS configuration to point at the new certificate (
fullchain.pem
) and private key (privkey.pem
) Certbot just generated for the domain you passed in thecertbot
command. - Reload or restart your webserver so it uses the new HTTPS virtualhost configuration.
By default, this role adds a cron job that will renew all installed certificates once per day at the hour and minute of your choosing.
You can test the auto-renewal (without actually renewing the cert) with the command:
/opt/certbot/certbot-auto renew --dry-run
See full documentation and options on the Certbot website.
MIT / BSD
This role was created in 2016 by Jeff Geerling, author of Ansible for DevOps.