docker-certbot

Build minimal docker with nginx and Let's Encrypt certificates which are managed by certbot and renewed according to crontab schedule. Use it for web site and frontend applications.

Table of Contents

• Features
• Configuring
• Installing
• Usage

Features

• Builds docker image based on nginx:alpine
• Installs cert-bot with necessary dependencies
• Runs docker container
• Retrieves Let's Encrypt certificates
• Renews certificates periodically
• Nginx config, certificates, and site data persists on a host file system
• Support of multiple domains and sites

Configuring

nginx config

Edit enginx.conf file by adding as many server blocks as many domains/subdomains you need.

  server {
      listen 80;
      server_name www.example.com;
      location / {
        root   /usr/share/nginx/html/example;
        index  index.html;
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;
      }
      # This location is for cert bot chalanage
      location /.well-known/acme-challenge/ {
      root /usr/share/nginx/html/certbot;
      } 
  }

Change values of server_name and root directives for each domain/subdomain.

install.sh config

Configuration of bash script install.sh is very straight forward. First six lines define values for variables that are used later on in the script.

domains - you should define the array of domains. Each domain has to be separated by the space.

domains=(www.example.com app.project.org)

email - defining your email is strongly recommend. It will be used in case Let's Encrypt decides to notify you regarding issues with your certificates.

staging - is used to define which Let's Encrypt enviroment to use. 0 means production, 1 means development environment. Please use 1 in case you testing this script otherwise you risk hitting the limit of allowed renewals.

docker_user (optional) - in case you would like to reuse the image later on by pushing it to docker hub.

image_name - it is just the docker image name that will be built using instructions in Dockerfile. You can change it to any name you'd like.

Installing

Install docker first:

curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com -o get-docker.sh
sh get-docker.sh

Create image and run docker:

chmod +x install.sh
./install.sh

Usage

After you will run the docker container three persistent folders will be created:

./nginx - folder with actual nginx default.conf file that is used by nginx inside a running container. This folder is mapped to /etc/nginx/conf.d folder inside your docker container.

./www - this folder is dedicated to your website or frontend application data. This folder is mapped to /usr/share/nginx/html folder inside your docker container.

./letsencrypt - folder for Let's Encrypt data including your certificates. This folder is mapped to /etc/letsencrypt folder inside your docker container.

I left plenty of comments inside install.sh script and Dockerfile, so feel free to play change, and improve. Just do not forget to share your improvements with me :)