Let’s Encrypt Auto SSL on Web Host Manager CPanel Server

This blog post describes how to set up free SSL certificates on a Web Host Manager CPanel server. This requires root access to the server, if you don’t have access to this then you must ask your service provider to install it for you.

What is Let’s Encrypt?

Let’s Encrypt is in their own words “free, automated, and open Certificate Authority” providing free SSL certificates to anyone who wants to use their services. The only requirement to obtain a certificate from them is to prove you own the domain. This service is backed by some of the big web companies including Google and Facebook so has a large technical group behind it.

Many SSL certificate providers do this through a convoluted process of manually adding DNS records or replying to emails found via DNS. Instead of having to do this you confirm your ownership by the newly developed ACME protocol.

One of the ways you can verify your domain is using an ACME client such as certbot. I wont be using that today as I wanted an automatic solution that worked with the CPanel servers I manage.

Let’s Encrypt with CPanel

To automatically install SSL certificates  CPanel provide an AutoSSL facility. By default doesn’t provide Lets Encrypt SSL Certificates but they can be enabled easily enough.

If you log into your server as root you can install the Let’s Encrypt Auto SSL module by running the following command:

1. /scripts/install_lets_encrypt_autossl_provider

Once you have run this CPanel should now let you select Let’s Encrypt as your Auto SSL provider!

The developers of CPanel are testing this and is likely to be rolled out in the future. However at the moment you need to install it manually. More information can be found in their blog post.