Installing Let's Encrypt SSL Certificates On Namecheap Hosting

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Acme.sh

acme.sh overview

In theory, his process only needs to be performed once. Running the acme.sh script creates a cron job that will handle certificate renewals.

Installing certificates

Run a test install

--webroot points to the working root of the website. If there is an "app" subdirectory that contains the web root, this path will need to reflect that. 

$ acme.sh --issue --webroot ~/damienjay.com -d www.mydomain.com -d mydomain.com -d etc.mydomain.com --staging

Run the actual certificate installation

$ acme.sh --issue --webroot ~/damienjay.com -d www.mydomain.com -d mydomain.com -d etc.mydomain.com --force

Apply the certificate to the site in cPanel

There is only one domain identifier for the website. This is the first domain listed for the site when issuing the certificate in the previous step. 

$ acme.sh --deploy --deploy-hook cpanel_uapi --domain www.mydomain.com

Make certificate active in cPanel

It's still necessary to make this the active certificate in cPanel.

  • cPanel > Security > SSL/TLS > Certificates (CRT) > Generate, view, upload, or delete certificates
  • Locate the new certificate in the list > Click the Install link to the right of the certificate.
  • Under Manage Installed SSL Websites locate the new certificate
  • Click Make primary to the right of the certificate.

At this point the new certificate should handling secure requests on the website.

Delete old certificates

Clean up older certificates in cPanel.

  • Click Return to SSL Manager at the bottom of the page.
  • Certificates (CRT) > Generate, view, upload, or delete certificates
  • Delete any certificates for the domain in question with older expiration dates.

Listing websites managed by acme.sh

At a command prompt on the server, list the contents of ~/.acme.sh. Each certificate managed by acme.sh will have its own directory here. 

$ ls ~/.acme.sh

Updating acme.sh

$ acme.sh --upgrade

Specifying default acme.sh CA server

$ acme.sh --set-default-ca --server letsencrypt

See https://github.com/acmesh-official/acme.sh/wiki/Server

Renewals

Renewals are supposed to happen automatically after installing a certificate with acme.sh, but I have been receiving expiration notices for domains up to two days prior to the expiration date. Not sure when exactly a domain would be renewed?

Confirm expiration date of a certificate

Using a browser

  • Load the site in a Chrome browser.
  • Open Developer Tools.
  • Click the Security tab.
  • Certificate > View Certificate button.
  • Expiration Date is displayed in the dialog.

Using cPanel

  • Log into cPanel.
  • Security > SSL/TLS
  • Generate, view, upload, or delete SSL certificates will show who issued the certificates in use.
  • Manage SSL Sites will show which sites have certificates, and when those certificates expire.

Troubleshooting

Certificate not renewing

After installing a certificate with acme.sh it should be renewed automatically. However, it's possible to manually renew certificates.

Certificate failing to verify on password-protected server

Use case

The server is password-protected with .htaccess directives.

Resolution

Make an exception for directory .well-known/acme-challenge/ but placing an .htaccess file there with the following contents: 

require all granted

Certificate failing to verify using .well-known challenge

Use case

  • Log into the server using ssh.
  • Run acme.sh script from the command line to renew certificate.
  • There will be errors to effect of "verify error" and "invalid response from [domain]/.well-knonwn/acme-challenge/...".

Cause

Permissions errors prevent the script from writing the file to .well-known/acme-challenge/ that is used to verify ownership of the domain.

Fix

The last time this happened, I compared the permissions for the web roots and .well-known directories for two sites hosted on the same server where one site's certificate was being renewed and the other was failing. I could not find any differences in the permissions.

What I ended up doing was to move the root directory of the site, create a new directory for the site, put a potboiler index html page in the directory, and then run the acme script. After this allowed me to renew the certificate, I copied all the content from the original directory back into the new one.

Also! Remember that the root of many of the web apps is in the app/ subdirectory! When issuing the certificate make sure to set the web root option appropriately, e.g. --webroot ~/mydomain.com/app

Timeout polling order status while issuing certificate

Use case

Manually issue a certificate with the following command: 

$ acme.sh --issue --webroot ~/my_webapp_root -d mydomain.com --force

Expected result

acme.sh sends request to the CA server and receives successful response.

Actual result 

[Sat Apr  9 17:40:56 EDT 2022] Polling order status: https://acme.zerossl.com/v2/DV90/order/dtElfwFq1sLFiXaP188uDw
[Sat Apr  9 17:40:59 EDT 2022] Order status is processing, lets sleep and retry.
[Sat Apr  9 17:40:59 EDT 2022] Retry after: 15
[Sat Apr  9 17:41:15 EDT 2022] Polling order status: https://acme.zerossl.com/v2/DV90/order/dtElfwFq1sLFiXaP188uDw
[Sat Apr  9 17:41:18 EDT 2022] Order status is processing, lets sleep and retry.
[Sat Apr  9 17:41:18 EDT 2022] Retry after: 15

Over and over again until finally the script times out with an error similar to this: 

[Sat Apr  9 17:42:29 EDT 2022] Sign error, wrong status

Solution

This happened using the default acme.sh CA server which is ZeroSSL. Changing the default CA server to Let's Encrypt fixed this. 

$ acme.sh --set-default-ca --server letsencrypt

See also

Let's Encrypt SSL Certificates on Namecheap Hosting (Legacy)

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