10bitadam/letsencrypt-nginx repository overview

• letsencrypt-nginx

This is a simple docker container that expands on the official nginx container to include letsencrypt to generate certificates.

** Usage

: docker run 10bitadam/letsencrypt-nginx

to start the container

** Installing a certificate

Once the container is running you will likely want to run certbot to create your certificates and update the configuration of nginx; something like the following.

: docker exec -it "$container_name" certbot run

It is also advisable to set up a cron job on the host system to periodically renew the certificates.

: docker exec "$container_name" certbot renew

** Persistent certificates

It's advisable to create a volume for /etc/letsencrypt so that your certificates don't go away when your droplet is destroyed.

: docker run -v letsencrypt:/etc/letsencrypt 10bitadam/letsencrypt-nginx

** Configuring nginx

The nginx container uses =/etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf= as the default configuration. Any =.conf= in =/etc/nginx/conf.d= will be used as nginx configuration so a volume can be used here too.

: docker run -v /path/to/confs:/etc/nginx/conf.d 10bitadam/letsencrypt-nginx

** Adding content

Web content can be shared with a volume as well.

: docker run -v /path/to/web-stuff:/var/www/html 10bitadam/letsencrypt-nginx

The right hand side of the volume is just an example as that path will be defined in configuration but that is the default

** Reinstall certificates

To have the container install already issued certificates without having to configure ssl in nginx manually, i.e. certbot installed a certificate, the container got destroyed and now a new container is started with the letsencrypt volume, define the domains that should be installed with an environment variable.

: docker run --env DOMAINS='blog.example.com cool.example.com' 10bitadam/letsencrypt-nginx