The Let’s Encrypt is a free SSL Certificate provider and its is founded by the non profit organization “ISRG”. Most important thing it s provided you free without any cost. After adding this SSL certificates now your websites are on HTTPS protocol. This certificates make the web secure by providing the SSL certificates for your websites. To implement these SSL certificates consider to follow all the steps in this tutorial.

Step-1 (Install the Apache Web Server)

Install Apache Web Server using DNF package installer

 dnf install httpd*

Start the httpd service

 systemctl start httpd

Enable the httpd service during boot time.

 systemctl enable httpd

Add your FQDN and Server IP Address

 vim /etc/hosts

Edit the lines With your FQDN & IP Address

127.0.0.1 techbrown.com
::1 techbrown.com
Step-2 (Configure the Apache Configuration File)
 vim /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

Add the given line

IncludeOptional setup/*.conf

Add Virtual Host on Apache Web Server

Create a Directory

 mkdir /etc/httpd/setup

Add the Virtual host

 vim /etc/httpd/setup/techbrown.com.conf

Add the given line to the configuration file

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName techbrown.com
ServerAlias techbrown.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/
</VirtualHost>

Restart the Apache Services

 systemctl restart httpd

Enable the EPEL Repository

 wget https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm
 rpm -ivh epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm

Install the Pre dependencies required during installations

 dnf install git python-pip
Step-3 (Generate the Free SSL certificates using Let’s Encrypt)

Clone the Let’s Encrypt Source code from GITHUB

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

Change the Directory to let’s encrypt Directory

 cd letsencrypt/

Note: Before Starting Setup Please add your domain name with correct IP address on your DNS A records using your domain DNS address dashboard and also check the ports 443 and 80 ports are allowed (in white list) by your firewall.

 ./letsencrypt-auto --apache -d techbrown.com --verbose

Add your Email ID for recovering the lost keys.

lets1

Accept the Terms of Service.

lets2
After that follow the steps on your nag screen to complete the let’s encrypt congratulation screen.

Step-4 (After Successfully generated SSL certificates add those to the Apache Virtual host configuration file)
 vim /etc/httpd/setup/techbrown.com.conf

Add the given line to the last line of configuration file

<VirtualHost *:443>
ServerName techbrown.com
ServerAlias techbrown.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/
SSLEngine on
SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/techbrown.com/cert.pem
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/techbrown.com/privkey.pem
SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/techbrown.com/chain.pem
</VirtualHost>

Edit Apache SSL configuration file

 vim /etc/httpd/conf.d/ssl.conf

Add these

SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/techbrown.com/cert.pem
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/techbrown.com/privkey.pem
SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/techbrown.com/chain.pem

Check the Virtual host generated by the Let’s Encrypt

 cat /etc/httpd/conf.d/vhost-techbrown.com-le-ssl.conf

Finally Restart the Apache Services

 systemctl restart httpd
Step-5 (Renew your Let’s encrypt before completion of 90 days)

The SSL certificates are valid for 90 days after that you need to renew them by running the given scripts

 ./letsencrypt-auto renew

You can check the HTTPS Web Site for your domain SSL configuration

https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html
lets7
For more info you can visit Let’s Encrypt official Web Site.

Congratulations now you have configured Lets Encrypt SSL with Apache web server.