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Certbot & Let's Encrypt

The following is what I use to issue or renew (manually) Let's Encrypt certificates for my home lab. I've got Certbot installed and use Cloudflare, so that is set up already. This single terminal command will issue for the TLD and give a wildcard certificate for all the subdomains.

certbot certonly \
  --agree-tos \
  --email [email protected] \
  -d tldomain.net \
  -d "*.tldomain.net" \
  --dns-cloudflare \
  --dns-cloudflare-credentials /etc/letsencrypt/cloudflare.ini \
  --dns-cloudflare-propagation-seconds 120

Certbot stores certificates and private keys in a specific directory structure. By default, this is /etc/letsencrypt/live/your_domain_name.

Here's a breakdown:

  • Certificate: /etc/letsencrypt/live/your_domain_name/fullchain.pem
  • Private Key: /etc/letsencrypt/live/your_domain_name/privkey.pem 

Renewing is easy with a single command:

certbot renew -v

The -v flag will enable verbose mode.

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