How To: Let's Encrypt and NodeBB

[A Former User]

I already covered this in my "High performance stack" tutorial. Still a nice tutorial.

[rod]

@AOKP I just looked at your high performance tutorial. Definitely a lot of information. Possibly too much all at once. I think people may find this succinct post just related to Let's Encrypt easier to digest.

[rod]

Edited to include a warning about using a sym link to the .well-known/acme-challenge directory.

[Bri]

@rod, is the root you specify in the nginx config arbitrary, an empty directory path that actually exists, or does it need to be the actual root of the public folder? I have a non-standard configuration where I have a dedicated user for running NodeBB, and the actual root location is in the home folder of that user (which is also non-standard, in the /usr/share/nginx dir)

EDIT: nvm, I forgot to specify the folder to save the file in with the -w flag

Thanks!

[julian]

@Bri root /var/www/yourdomainhere.com/html; this one?

It's not used by NodeBB, only by Let's Encrypt.

It will try to access the file located in /.well-known/acme-challenge/, and that is relative to the root as defined.

For my Let's Encrypt setup, I instead use:

  location "/.well-known/acme-challenge" {
      root /usr/share/nginx/html;
  }

... as that folder is served by nginx already, so less configuration (I modify my ./letsencrypt-auto command according as well, of course)

[Bri]

Cool, didn't know that you could put the "root" inside the location block, thanks!

[01]

@rod hi rod, im doing exactly what u r saying but i have a problem is where should i put the verification files? another saying is where to put these two files below to upload into
.well-known/acme-challenge/ directory?

nOmtkseci4NqOwrx9OYnmtQaoNsPrqq7_JG3Kf4iVd8
NJpedX-UNHPAVRaur_ZNyiSjwpqrudSPuX2eL8PY010

thanks.

[0xA4B16]

I'm using a Lets Encrypt based service at https://www.sslforfree.com which allows DNS authentication instead of the two file uploads. Too much hassle to get that directory working ..

[yariplus]

@01 You tell nginx where to look for the files.

server {
    listen       80;
    server_name  yourdomainhere.com;
    ...

    location "/.well-known/acme-challenge" {
        root /usr/share/nginx/html;
    }
}

This would mean the files you create are:

/usr/share/nginx/html/nOmtkseci4NqOwrx9OYnmtQaoNsPrqq7_JG3Kf4iVd8
/usr/share/nginx/html/NJpedX-UNHPAVRaur_ZNyiSjwpqrudSPuX2eL8PY010

[01]

@yariplus said in How To: Let's Encrypt and NodeBB:

@01 You tell nginx where to look for the files.

server {
    listen       80;
    server_name  yourdomainhere.com;
    ...

    location "/.well-known/acme-challenge" {
        root /usr/share/nginx/html;
    }
}

This would mean the files you create are:

/usr/share/nginx/html/nOmtkseci4NqOwrx9OYnmtQaoNsPrqq7_JG3Kf4iVd8
/usr/share/nginx/html/NJpedX-UNHPAVRaur_ZNyiSjwpqrudSPuX2eL8PY010

Thank you @yariplus, I have tried to reverse proxy these files over but didn't work. So I found a very easy way to do it.
I downloaded Caddy which is a tiny open source server, and verified the files use the caddy server. Everyone use LE ssl on nodebb should do it this way, much easier.

Now I'm encountering a new problem, I tried to setup the certificates for my nodebb but it doesn't work.

This is my nginx config

#user  nobody;
worker_processes  1;

#error_log  logs/error.log;
#error_log  logs/error.log  notice;
#error_log  logs/error.log  info;

#pid        logs/nginx.pid;


events {
    worker_connections  1024;
}


http {
    include       mime.types;
    default_type  application/octet-stream;

    #log_format  main  '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
    #                  '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
    #                  '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';

    #access_log  logs/access.log  main;

    sendfile        on;
    #tcp_nopush     on;

    #keepalive_timeout  0;
    keepalive_timeout  65;

    #gzip  on;

server {
    listen 80;

    server_name mydomain.com;

    location / {
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
        proxy_set_header X-NginX-Proxy true;

        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:4567;
        proxy_redirect off;

        # Socket.IO Support
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
		
		
    }	
}




server {
    # listen on ssl, deliver with speedy if possible
    listen 443 ssl http2;

    server_name mydomain.com;

    # change these paths!

    ssl_certificate /cert/bundle.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key /cert/mydomain.key;

    # enables all versions of TLS, but not SSLv2 or 3 which are weak and now deprecated.
    ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;

    # disables all weak ciphers
    ssl_ciphers 'AES128+EECDH:AES128+EDH';

    ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;

    location / {
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
        proxy_set_header X-NginX-Proxy true;

        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:4567/; 
        proxy_redirect off;

        # Socket.IO Support
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
    }
}

}

nodebb config

{
    "url": "https://mydomain.com",
    "secret": "************************",
    "database": "mongo",
    "mongo": {
        "host": "127.0.0.1",
        "port": "*****",
        "username": "****",
        "password": "*****",
        "database": "****",
        "uri": ""
    },
    "port": "4567"
}

Any idea why it doesn't work?

[PitaJ]

@01 it's not "much easier", it's just wrong. If you don't use nginx to do it, you'll not be able to do automatic renewal correctly.

Is nginx running? It doesn't look like you actually modified your nginx config to include the static serving for acme challenge. Have you verified that the nginx config is valid?

[01]

@PitaJ said in How To: Let's Encrypt and NodeBB:

@01 it's not "much easier", it's just wrong. If you don't use nginx to do it, you'll not be able to do automatic renewal correctly.

Is nginx running? It doesn't look like you actually modified your nginx config to include the static serving for acme challenge. Have you verified that the nginx config is valid?

@PitaJ Sorry for the confusion, these two configs are for trying to setup ssl certificates on my nodebb, I have already verified with the acme challenge with the static server. I have got the ssl certificates already with the static server, with nginx I just don't know how to get it to work. So I gave up.

Im trying to get ssl work on my nodebb and I've been search everywhere but still can't get it to work, any suggestions? I think this nginx config should be valid, because nginx runs with this cinfg file. if there are errors in the config normally nginx wont run at all.

I got my certificates issued from this website https://zerossl.com/, to renew the certificates they said only require the csr file, so I have to manually renew it anyway. I hosted my nodebb on windows 10 so it's different to many of the docs and so hard to get everything to work.

[yariplus]

@01 What is the error you are receiving when you visit your site?

If you can access your site, but it says the connection is insecure, then part of your certificate chain is missing or invalid.