In this article, I will guide you about using the Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate for cPanel hostname. As you know, cPanel provides a free SSL certificate for cPanel hostname as default. But some times it not works or limit issue, so you can use the following steps to have a valid SSL certificate for your cPanel services.
Install the Certbot from EPEL
Run following command as root user to install certbot from epel repo
yum install --enablerepo=epel certbotCreate deploy-hook script for Certbot
Create hostname-ssl.sh file and copy below contents to it and save.
vi /usr/local/bin/hostname-ssl.sh#!/bin/sh
set -e
/bin/cat /etc/letsencrypt/live/$HOSTNAME/privkey.pem /etc/letsencrypt/live/$HOSTNAME/cert.pem > /var/cpanel/ssl/cpanel/cpanel.pem
/bin/chown cpanel:cpanel /var/cpanel/ssl/cpanel/cpanel.pem
/bin/cat /etc/letsencrypt/live/$HOSTNAME/privkey.pem > /var/cpanel/ssl/exim/exim.key
/bin/cat /etc/letsencrypt/live/$HOSTNAME/cert.pem > /var/cpanel/ssl/exim/exim.crt
/bin/chown mailnull:mail /var/cpanel/ssl/exim/exim.*
/bin/cat /etc/letsencrypt/live/$HOSTNAME/privkey.pem > /var/cpanel/ssl/ftp/ftpd-rsa-key.pem
/bin/cat /etc/letsencrypt/live/$HOSTNAME/cert.pem > /var/cpanel/ssl/ftp/ftpd-rsa.pem
/bin/cat /etc/letsencrypt/live/$HOSTNAME/privkey.pem /etc/letsencrypt/live/$HOSTNAME/cert.pem > /var/cpanel/ssl/ftp/pure-ftpd.pem
/bin/chown root:wheel /var/cpanel/ssl/ftp/*
/bin/cat /etc/letsencrypt/live/$HOSTNAME/privkey.pem > /var/cpanel/ssl/dovecot/dovecot.key
/bin/cat /etc/letsencrypt/live/$HOSTNAME/cert.pem > /var/cpanel/ssl/dovecot/dovecot.crt
/bin/chown root:wheel /var/cpanel/ssl/dovecot/dovecot.*
/bin/systemctl restart cpanel.service
/bin/systemctl restart exim.service
/bin/systemctl restart pure-ftpd.service
/bin/systemctl restart dovecot.service
#If above cpanel commands doesn't work for your cpanel version. Replace below lines with above lines
and remove #.
#/scripts/restartsrv_cpsrvd
#/scripts/restartsrv_ftpd
#/scripts/restartsrv_dovecot
#/scripts/restartsrv_eximNow make it executable
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/hostname-ssl.shIssue a certificate for cPanel hostname
With the following command you will be able to issue a Let’s Encrypt valid certificate for cPanel HOSTNAME
certbot --debug certonly -a webroot --agree-tos --webroot-path=/usr/local/apache/htdocs --deploy-hook=/usr/local/bin/hostname-ssl.sh --renew-by-default -d $HOSTNAMECertificate renew cron job
For the certificate, auto-renew add the following lines in your cron job file.
crontab -e
00 02 * * * certbot renewThat's all.