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How To Secure Apache with Let’s Encrypt on Ubuntu 18.04
Introduction
Let’s Encrypt is a Certificate Authority (CA) that provides an easy way to obtain and install free TLS/SSL certificates, thereby enabling encrypted HTTPS on web servers. It simplifies the process by providing a software client, Certbot, that attempts to automate most (if not all) of the required steps. Currently, the entire process of obtaining and installing a certificate is fully automated on both Apache and Nginx.
In this tutorial, you will use Certbot to obtain a free SSL certificate for Apache on Ubuntu 18.04 and set up your certificate to renew automatically.
This tutorial will use a separate Apache virtual host file instead of the default configuration file. We recommend creating new Apache virtual host files for each domain because it helps to avoid common mistakes and maintains the default files as a fallback configuration.
Prerequisites
To follow this tutorial, you will need:
- One Ubuntu 18.04 server set up by following this initial server setup for Ubuntu 18.04 tutorial, including a sudo non-root user and a firewall.
- A fully registered domain name. This tutorial will use your_domain as an example throughout. You can purchase a domain name on Namecheap, get one for free on Freenom, or use the domain registrar of your choice.
- Both of the following DNS records set up for your server. You can follow this introduction to DigitalOcean DNS for details on how to add them.
- An A record with
your_domain
pointing to your server’s public IP address. - An A record with
www.your_domain
pointing to your server’s public IP address.
- An A record with
- Apache installed by following How To Install Apache on Ubuntu 18.04. Be sure that you have a virtual host file for your domain. This tutorial will use
/etc/apache2/sites-available/your_domain.conf
as an example.
Step 1 — Installing Certbot
The first step to using Let’s Encrypt to obtain an SSL certificate is to install the Certbot software on your server.
Certbot is in very active development, so the Certbot packages provided by Ubuntu tend to be outdated. However, the Certbot developers maintain a Ubuntu software repository with up-to-date versions, so we’ll use that repository instead.
First, add the repository:
You’ll need to press ENTER
to accept.
Install Certbot’s Apache package with apt
:
Certbot is now ready to use, but in order for it to configure SSL for Apache, we need to verify some of Apache’s configuration.
Step 2 — Set Up the SSL Certificate
Certbot needs to be able to find the correct virtual host in your Apache configuration for it to automatically configure SSL. Specifically, it does this by looking for a ServerName
directive that matches the domain you request a certificate for.
If you followed the virtual host set up step in the Apache installation tutorial, you should have a VirtualHost block for your domain at /etc/apache2/sites-available/your_domain.com.conf
with the ServerName
directive already set appropriately.
To check, open the virtual host file for your domain using nano
or your favorite text editor:
Find the existing ServerName
line. It should look like this:
If it does, exit your editor and move on to the next step.
If it doesn’t, update it to match. Then save the file, quit your editor, and verify the syntax of your configuration edits:
If you get an error, reopen the virtual host file and check for any typos or missing characters. Once your configuration file’s syntax is correct, reload Apache to load the new configuration:
Certbot can now find the correct VirtualHost block and update it.
Next, let’s update the firewall to allow HTTPS traffic.
Step 3 — Allowing HTTPS Through the Firewall
If you have the ufw
firewall enabled, as recommended by the prerequisite guides, you’ll need to adjust the settings to allow for HTTPS traffic. Luckily, Apache registers a few profiles with ufw
upon installation.
You can see the current setting by typing:
It will probably look like this, meaning that only HTTP traffic is allowed to the web server:
Status: active
To Action From
-- ------ ----
OpenSSH ALLOW Anywhere
Apache ALLOW Anywhere
OpenSSH (v6) ALLOW Anywhere (v6)
Apache (v6) ALLOW Anywhere (v6)
To additionally let in HTTPS traffic, allow the Apache Full profile and delete the redundant Apache profile allowance:
Your status should now look like this:
Status: active
To Action From
-- ------ ----
OpenSSH ALLOW Anywhere
Apache Full ALLOW Anywhere
OpenSSH (v6) ALLOW Anywhere (v6)
Apache Full (v6) ALLOW Anywhere (v6)
Next, let’s run Certbot and fetch our certificates.
Step 4 — Obtaining an SSL Certificate
Certbot provides a variety of ways to obtain SSL certificates through plugins. The Apache plugin will take care of reconfiguring Apache and reloading the config whenever necessary. To use this plugin, type the following:
This runs certbot
with the --apache
plugin, using -d
to specify the names you’d like the certificate to be valid for.
If this is your first time running certbot
, you will be prompted to enter an email address and agree to the terms of service. After doing so, certbot
will communicate with the Let’s Encrypt server, then run a challenge to verify that you control the domain you’re requesting a certificate for.
If that’s successful, certbot
will ask how you’d like to configure your HTTPS settings:
Please choose whether or not to redirect HTTP traffic to HTTPS, removing HTTP access.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1: No redirect - Make no further changes to the webserver configuration.
2: Redirect - Make all requests redirect to secure HTTPS access. Choose this for
new sites, or if you're confident your site works on HTTPS. You can undo this
change by editing your web server's configuration.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Select the appropriate number [1-2] then [enter] (press 'c' to cancel):
Select your choice then hit ENTER
. The configuration will be updated, and Apache will reload to pick up the new settings. certbot
will wrap up with a message telling you the process was successful and where your certificates are stored:
IMPORTANT NOTES:
- Congratulations! Your certificate and chain have been saved at:
/etc/letsencrypt/live/your_domain/fullchain.pem
Your key file has been saved at:
/etc/letsencrypt/live/your_domain/privkey.pem
Your cert will expire on 2018-07-23. To obtain a new or tweaked
version of this certificate in the future, simply run certbot again
with the "certonly" option. To non-interactively renew *all* of
your certificates, run "certbot renew"
- Your account credentials have been saved in your Certbot
configuration directory at /etc/letsencrypt. You should make a
secure backup of this folder now. This configuration directory will
also contain certificates and private keys obtained by Certbot so
making regular backups of this folder is ideal.
- If you like Certbot, please consider supporting our work by:
Donating to ISRG / Let's Encrypt: https://letsencrypt.org/donate
Donating to EFF: https://eff.org/donate-le
Your certificates are downloaded, installed, and loaded. Try reloading your website using https://
and notice your browser’s security indicator. It should indicate that the site is properly secured, usually with a green lock icon. If you test your server using the SSL Labs Server Test, it will get an A grade.
Let’s finish by testing the renewal process.
Step 5 — Verifying Certbot Auto-Renewal
The certbot
package we installed takes care of renewals by including a renew script to /etc/cron.d
, which is managed by a systemctl
service called certbot.timer
. This script runs twice a day and will automatically renew any certificate that’s within thirty days of expiration.
To check the status of this service and make sure it’s active and running, you can use:
You’ll get output similar to this:
● certbot.timer - Run certbot twice daily
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/certbot.timer; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (waiting) since Tue 2020-04-28 17:57:48 UTC; 17h ago
Trigger: Wed 2020-04-29 23:50:31 UTC; 12h left
Triggers: ● certbot.service
Apr 28 17:57:48 fine-turtle systemd[1]: Started Run certbot twice daily.
To test the renewal process, you can do a dry run with certbot
:
If you see no errors, you’re all set. When necessary, Certbot will renew your certificates and reload Apache to pick up the changes. If the automated renewal process ever fails, Let’s Encrypt will send a message to the email you specified, warning you when your certificate is about to expire.
Conclusion
In this tutorial, you installed the Let’s Encrypt client certbot
, downloaded SSL certificates for your domain, configured Apache to use these certificates, and set up automatic certificate renewal. If you have further questions about using Certbot, their documentation is a good place to start.
How to Fix Windows and Linux Showing Different Times When Dual Booting
source: https://www.howtogeek.com/323390/how-to-fix-windows-and-linux-showing-different-times-when-dual-booting/
Make Linux Use Local Time
Making Linux use local time the same way Windows does is probably the best option. Windows does have a registry setting that forces it to store the time as UTC, but it reportedly isn’t well supported and can cause problems with some third-party applications that always assume the hardware clock is in local time. It’s also incompatible with Windows’ own Internet time-syncing service.
The steps to make your Linux system use local time can vary from Linux distribution to Linux distribution. However, on any Linux distribution with systemd, you can use the timedatectl
command to make this change. This will work on modern versions of Ubuntu, Fedora, Red Hat, Debian, Mint, and other Linux distributions that use systemd.
To make this change, first open a Terminal window on your Linux system. Run the following command to put the real time clock on the motherboard into local time. Linux will store the time in local time, just like Windows does.
timedatectl set-local-rtc 1 --adjust-system-clock
To check your current settings, run:
timedatectl
If you see “RTC in local TZ: yes”, Linux is set to use the local time zone instead of UTC. The command warns you that this mode is not fully supported and can cause some problems when changing between time zones and with daylight savings time. However, this mode is probably better supported than the UTC option in Windows. If you dual-boot with Windows, Windows will handle daylight savings time for you.
If you ever want to undo this change, run the following command:
timedatectl set-local-rtc 0 --adjust-system-clock
Safest way to clean up boot partition – Ubuntu
source: https://gist.github.com/ipbastola/2760cfc28be62a5ee10036851c654600
Case I: if /boot is not 100% full and apt is working
1. Check the current kernel version
$ uname -r
It will shows the list like below:
3.19.0-64-generic
2. Remove the OLD kernels
2.a. List the old kernel
$ sudo dpkg --list 'linux-image*'|awk '{ if ($1=="ii") print $2}'|grep -v `uname -r`
You will get the list of images something like below:
linux-image-3.19.0-25-generic
linux-image-3.19.0-56-generic
linux-image-3.19.0-58-generic
linux-image-3.19.0-59-generic
linux-image-3.19.0-61-generic
linux-image-3.19.0-65-generic
linux-image-extra-3.19.0-25-generic
linux-image-extra-3.19.0-56-generic
linux-image-extra-3.19.0-58-generic
linux-image-extra-3.19.0-59-generic
linux-image-extra-3.19.0-61-generic
2.b. Now its time to remove old kernel one by one as
$ sudo apt-get purge linux-image-3.19.0-25-generic
$ sudo apt-get purge linux-image-3.19.0-56-generic
$ sudo apt-get purge linux-image-3.19.0-58-generic
$ sudo apt-get purge linux-image-3.19.0-59-generic
$ sudo apt-get purge linux-image-3.19.0-61-generic
$ sudo apt-get purge linux-image-3.19.0-65-generic
When you’re done removing the older kernels, you can run this to remove ever packages you won’t need anymore:
$ sudo apt-get autoremove
And finally you can run this to update grub kernel list:
$ sudo update-grub
apt
i.e. /boot is 100% full
Case II: Can’t Use NOTE: this is only if you can’t use apt to clean up due to a 100% full /boot
1. Get the list of kernel images
Get the list of kernel images and determine what you can do without. This command will show installed kernels except the currently running one
$ sudo dpkg --list 'linux-image*'|awk '{ if ($1=="ii") print $2}'|grep -v `uname -r`
You will get the list of images somethign like below:
linux-image-3.19.0-25-generic
linux-image-3.19.0-56-generic
linux-image-3.19.0-58-generic
linux-image-3.19.0-59-generic
linux-image-3.19.0-61-generic
linux-image-3.19.0-65-generic
linux-image-extra-3.19.0-25-generic
linux-image-extra-3.19.0-56-generic
linux-image-extra-3.19.0-58-generic
linux-image-extra-3.19.0-59-generic
linux-image-extra-3.19.0-61-generic
2. Prepare Delete
Craft a command to delete all files in /boot for kernels that don’t matter to you using brace expansion to keep you sane. Remember to exclude the current and two newest kernel images. From above Example, it’s
sudo rm -rf /boot/*-3.19.0-{25,56,58,59,61,65}-*
3. Clean up what’s making apt grumpy about a partial install.
sudo apt-get -f install
4. Autoremove
Finally, autoremove to clear out the old kernel image packages that have been orphaned by the manual boot clean.
sudo apt-get autoremove
5. Update Grub
sudo update-grub
6. Now you can update, install packages
sudo apt-get update
How to set up working X11 forwarding on WSL2
First: See and Install
Then:
Add the following to your ~/.bashrc
:
export DISPLAY=$(awk '/nameserver / {print $2; exit}' /etc/resolv.conf 2>/dev/null):0
export LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=1
Enable Public Access on your X11 server for Windows.*
Add a separate inbound rule for TCP port 6000 to the windows firewall in order to allow WSL access to the X server, as described by the wsl-windows-toolbar-launcher people.
Source: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/61110603/how-to-set-up-working-x11-forwarding-on-wsl2