Ubuntu

SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer, the protocol that provides the encryption. It provides secure, encrypted communications between a website and an internet browser. and are typically installed on pages that require end-users to submit sensitive information over the internet like credit card details or passwords, used to secure our website and web app.

Install OpenSSL

OpenSSL is a software library to be used in applications that need to secure communication over the internet. To install on Ubuntu/Debian run the following command.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install openssl

Generate Key and CSR

CSR stands for Certificate Signing request, To generate server key and CSR file run the following command, replace example.com to your domain name on which you want to install SSL certificate

openssl genrsa -out example.com.key 2048
openssl req -new -sha256 -key example.com.key -out example.com.csr

When you will run the above command it will ask your information like

Country: IN
State or Province: XYZ
City or Locality: XYZ
Organization Unit: XYZ
Organization: XYZ
Common Name: www.example.com

Fill out your details and hit enter, In Country provide two digits of your country code(example India: IN, USA: US etc )

Download these two files (example.com.key and example.com.csr) and submit it to the certificate provider, Than they will issue the certificate. The certificate should contains two file .crt and .ca-bundle or bundle.crt

Put your certificate file, bundle file and key file in the directory /etc/ssl/certs/

SSLCertificateFile — Certificate file
SSLCertificateKeyFile — Server key file
SSLCertificateChainFile — bundle file

Configure Apache Web Server

create the virtual host in apache, Open the file and make the virtual host for your domain and include the domain name, port 443, certificate file path, etc. Open sudo nano /etc/apache2/site-available/example.com.conf and add below code

If you want to redirect all your traffic to https than make sure you are also adding redirect rule. The virtual host may look like

Note: Don’t forget to replace example.com with your own domain name and update SSL cert and key file paths

<VirtualHost *:443>
     ServerAdmin [email protected]
     DocumentRoot /var/www/html
     ServerName example.com
     ServerAlias www.example.com
     SSLEngine on
     SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl/certs/example.com.crt
     SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/certs/example.com.key
     SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/ssl/certs/example_bundle.crt
     <Directory /var/www/html>
          Options FollowSymLinks
          AllowOverride All
     </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

#Redirect all http traffic to https
<VirtualHost *:80>
     ServerName example.com
     ServerAlias www.example.com
     RewriteEngine On
     RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
     RewriteRule (.*) https://%{SERVER_NAME}/$1 [R,L]
</VirtualHost>

Enable Rewrite and SSL Mode in apache

Run below command in terminal to enable apache rewrite and SSL module

sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo a2enmod ssl

Activate virtual host

Run below command to activate virtual host

sudo a2ensite /etc/apache2/site-available/example.com.conf

Restart apache services

Now restart apache bun below command in terminal

sudo service apache2 restart

Now Open your website URL in web browser eg. example.com or www.example.com and you will see a green(Secure) lock before the URL.

Kishor Kumar

Linux/Windows System and SQL Server Database Administrator with more than 4.5 years of experience in Linux Servers administration, Windows Administration, Network Administration, SQL Server Administration, MySQL Administration and SQL Programming.

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