Amazon Linux (aka. Amazon Linux 1) was straight forward to get Let’s Encrypt setup, it was a breeze and the documentation wasn’t too bad. I don’t know why Let’s Encrypt support for Amazon Linux 2 just isn’t where it needs to be, given the size and scale of Amazon Linux 2 and the fact that Amazon Linux is now an unsupported operating system. It’s likely because Amazon would prefer you to use their AWS Certificate Manager instead, but what if you just want a Let’s Encrypt certificate setting up with ease. Let’s take a look at how you get Let’s Encrypt setup on an AWS EC2 instance that is running Amazon Linux 2 as the operating system/AMI.
Assumptions
We’re assuming you’ve got Apache / Apache2 installed and set up already with at least one domain name. If you are using Nginx or other as your Web Server software then you’ll need to tweak the commands slightly.
How to Install Let’s Encrypt on Amazon Linux 2
Firstly, we need to get the Let’s Encrypt software installed on your Amazon Linux 2 machine, this is called Certbot. For those of you looking for the quick answer, here’s how you install Let’s Encrypt on Amazon Linux 2 along with the dependences;
yum search certbot sudo amazon-linux-extras install epel sudo yum install python2-certbot-apache sudo yum install certbot-apache sudo yum install mod_ssl python-certbot-apache sudo certbot --apache -d yum-info.contradodigital.com
For those of you looking for a bit more information. There are a few fairly undocumented dependencies to get this working. So to get started you’ll want to install the dependencies for Let’s Encrypt on Amazon Linux 2 including;
- Epel, aka. The Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux, from the Amazon Linux Extras repository
- Python2 Certbot Apache using Yum
- Certbot Apache using Yum
- Mod_SSL, Python Certbot Apache using Yum
As it was a bit of a pain to get this configured, I’m fairly sure one of the above isn’t required, I just can’t recall which one that was.
How to Configure Let’s Encrypt on Amazon Linux 2 for a Domain
So now you’ve got Let’s Encrypt installed on Amazon Linux 2, it’s time to generate an SSL certificate for your domain that is hosted. For the purpose of simplicity we’re going to assume you’re running very basic setup such as www.example.com/HelloWorld.html. There are other nuances you need to consider when you have a more complex setup that are outside of the scope of this blog post.
sudo certbot --apache -d yum-info.contradodigital.com
What you’ll notice in the above is that we’re using Certbot and telling it that we’ve got an Apache Web Server behind the scenes and that we want to generate an SSL certificate for the Domain (-d flag) yum-info.contradodigital.com.
Simply run that command and everything should magically work for you. Just follow the steps throughout.
Summary
The above steps should help you get setup using Let’s Encrypt on Amazon Linux 2 without much fuss. Amazon Linux 2 really does feel like it has taken a step back in places, Amazon Linux 1 had more up to date software in places, and easier to work with things like Let’s Encrypt. But hey. We can only work with the tools we’ve got on the AWS platform. Please leave any comments for how you’ve got along with installing Let’s Encrypt and getting it all set up on Amazon Linux 2, the good, the bad and the ugly.
Michael Cropper