Introduction

SSL is a security mechanism that allows switching from HTTP to HTTPS

HTTPS is a secure connection type with SSL encryption.

When accessed, HTTP will listen on port 80, while HTTPS will listen on port 443 of the system.

To be able to install SSL, we will use the certbot tool

Deployment method

To install certbot, first we need to update the installation packages of the VM

sudo apt-get update

Next, we will install certbot with the following command

sudo apt-get install certbot python3-certbot-nginx

To install SSL for a specific domain, we will use the following command

certbot --nginx -d nglearns.test

After installation, the config file will be reset as follows

server {
  server_name nglearns.test;

  location / {
      proxy_pass http://localhost:3000;
      proxy_http_version 1.1;
      proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
      proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
  }

  listen 443 ssl; # managed by Certbot
  ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/nglearns.test/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
  ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/nglearns.test/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot
  include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot
  ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem; # managed by Certbot
}
server {
  if ($host = nglearns.test) {
      return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
  } # managed by Certbot


  listen 80;
  server_name nglearns.test;
  return 404; # managed by Certbot
}

Here, we can see that certbot has set up listening and ssl configuration for us.

SSL will expire after 30 days, but certbot will help us renew it when it expires.