Adding TLS certificates in CHT 4.x

By default, CHT 4.x will create a self-signed certificate for every deployment. These instructions are for changing to either a pre-existing certificate or automatically creating and renewing a Certbot based certificate using ACME, like Let’s Encrypt.

This guide assumes you’ve already met the hosting requirements, specifically around Docker being installed.

Pre-existing certificate

To load your certificates into your CHT instance, we’ll be creating an interstitial container called cht-temp-tls which will enable you to copy your local certificate files into the native docker volume.

Prerequisites

You have two files locally on your workstation in the directory you’re currently in:

• key.pem - the private key for your TLS certificate
• chain.pem - both the public and any interstitial keys concatenated into one file

Also, be sure you have started your CHT instance once and all your volumes are created.

Loading the certificate

1. Find the name of your cht-ssl volume with this call:

   docker volume ls --filter "name=cht-ssl"
   

   It is very likely that cht_cht-ssl is the name of our cht-ssl volume.

2. Using the volume name found in step 1, start a container called temp which allow us to copy files into the docker volume:

   docker run -d --rm --name temp -v cht_cht-ssl:/etc/nginx/private/ alpine tail -f /dev/null
   

3. Copy the two pem files into the volume via the temporary container:

   docker cp key.pem temp:/etc/nginx/private/.
   docker cp cert.pem temp:/etc/nginx/private/.
   

4. Stop the temp container:

   docker kill temp
   

Your certificates are now safely stored in the native docker volume. Restart your CHT instance the way you started it, being sure to set the correct CERTIFICATE_MODE and SSL_VOLUME_MOUNT_PATH per the prerequisites.

Certbot certificate

If you have a deployment with a publically accessible domain name, you can have Certbot automatically create free TLS certificates by using their Docker image.

Assuming your CHT instance is running with the default self signed cert:

1. Create certbot compose and env files by copying and pasting this code:

   mkdir -p /home/ubuntu/cht/certbot
   cd /home/ubuntu/cht/certbot
   cat > docker-compose.yml << EOF
   version: '3.9'
   services:
     certbot:
         container_name: certbot
         hostname: certbot
         image: certbot/certbot
         volumes:
           - ssl-storage:/etc/nginx/private/
           - ssl-storage:/var/log/letsencrypt/
         command: certonly --debug --deploy-hook /etc/nginx/private/deploy.sh --webroot -w /etc/nginx/private/certbot/ --domain \$DOMAIN --non-interactive --key-type rsa --agree-tos --register-unsafely-without-email \$STAGING
   volumes:
     ssl-storage:
         name: \${CHT_SSL_VOLUME}
         external: true
   EOF
   
   cat > .env << EOF
   DOMAIN=deleteme2-certbot-nginx-cht.plip.com
   STAGING=
   CHT_SSL_VOLUME=cht_cht-ssl
   TZ=America/Whitehorse
   EOF
   

2. Generate certs:

   cd /home/ubuntu/cht/certbot
   docker compose up
   

3. Run this command to find the name of your CHT ngnix container:

   docker ps --filter "name=nginx"  --format '{{ .Names }}'
   

4. Assuming the name is cht_nginx_1 from the prior step, reload your nginx config with this command:

   docker exec -it cht_nginx_1 nginx -s reload
   

5. Attempt to renew your certificates once a week by adding this cronjob via crontab -e. Certbot will only renew them as needed:

   0 0 * * 0 cd /home/ubuntu/cht/certbot&&docker compose up