The sys admin's daily grind – Let's Encrypt
Always at Hand
Columnist Charly fights the fight for free SSL certificates with Let's Encrypt. He particularly likes the matching software client that takes care of everything – from certificate retrieval to web server integration.
Although more and more web servers now use TLS, small businesses and amateur users are worried about the administrative overhead that accompanies SSL certificates. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the University of Michigan, and the Mozilla foundation helped launch a project that addresses two pain points.
For one thing, it distributes Let's Encrypt [1] SSL certificates free of charge. For another – and this is where the project scores points compared with other free offerings – it delivers a Python client software tool that autonomously takes care of creating, validating, signing, and renewing certificates in good time. It even helps administrators integrate certificates with services running on their servers.
For Debian and its derivative distributions, you can pick up prebuilt packages. If you prefer to do it yourself – or are forced to do so – you can retrieve the Let's Encrypt client from GitHub with the following command:
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