Certbot NGINX

Simple Ansible role to install certbot with NGINX plugin on:

• Ubuntu 16.04
• Ubuntu 18.04.
• Ubuntu 20.04.
• Ubuntu 22.04.
• Ubuntu 24.04.

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: myaccount@letsencrypt.org
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: myaccount@letsencrypt.org

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: myaccount@letsencrypt.org
    - 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 the domains list and the role checks the difference between the domains presents in the certificate and the list of domains provided and choose if need to renew the certificate or not. If you want to force the renewal process, you can do 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