Certbot NGINX

Simple Ansible role to install certbot with NGINX plugin on Ubuntu 16.04 and Ubuntu 18.04.

This role will:

1. Add certbot PPA repository
2. Install certbot and python-certbot-nginx packages
3. certbot package will add a renew cron job and a systemd-timer (More info)
4. Generate a Let's Encrypt SSL certificates for the given domain_name.

Warning

If you already have Nginx installed with a site configured pointing to files in /etc/letsencrypt the certificate creation task will fail (example).

In general is recommended to execute this role before any other role installing and configuring Nginx.

Role Variables

domain_name: www.mydomain.io
letsencrypt_email: [email protected]
certbot_nginx_cert_name: mycert # optional
certbot_version: 0.31.0-1+ubuntu{{ ansible_distribution_version }}.1+certbot+1 # optional
certbot_nginx_version: 0.31.0-1+ubuntu{{ ansible_distribution_version }}.1+certbot+1 # optional

if set, certbot_nginx_cert_name's value will be passed to the certbot's --cert-name argument, which is used to identify the certificate in certbot command such as certbot delete. You will see a list of certificates identified with this name by running certbot certificates. This name will also be used as the file paths for the certificate in /etc/letsencrypt/live/.

Example Playbook - Single certificate

# Playbook
- hosts: servers
  roles:
    - role: coopdevs.certbot_nginx
      vars:
        domain_name: www.mydomain.io
        letsencrypt_email: [email protected]

Example Playbook - Multiple certificates creation

Also allow to generate and manage multiple certificates in the same host. You can define the var domain_names and configure a role to incude the this role in a loop.

# Playbook
- hosts: servers
  roles:
    - role: coopdevs.certbot_nginx
      vars:
        letsencrypt_email: [email protected]
    - role: certificates
      vars:
        domain_names:
          - community.coopdevs.org
          - forms.coopdevs.org

Create a custom role including the certbot_nginx role that generates the certificates:

# certificates.yml Role
---
- name: Install SSL certificates
  include_role:
    name: vendor/coopdevs.certbot_nginx
    tasks_from: certificate.yml
  with_items: "{{ domain_names }}"
  loop_control:
    loop_var: domain_name

You need to declare the loop_control to map the item var of the with_item loop with the loop_var value as domain_name. See the loop_control doc

Updating Existing Certificates

If the details for your site have changed since the certificate was created, you can update it by defining certbot_force_update: true or passing --extra-vars "certbot_force_update=true" via the commandline.

Let's Encrypt Staging Environment

This role includes letsencrypt_staging variable which defaults to no. For development or debugging purposes, one can set it to yes, for example by Passing Variables On The Command Line --extra-vars "letsencrypt_staging=yes"

This will result in use of Let's Encrypt Staging Environment and reducing chance of running up against rate limits.

License

BSD

Author Information

Coopdevs http://coopdevs.org