Let's Encrypt provide free SSL certificates for HTTPS. It's possible to get a Let's Encrypt certificate working on PythonAnywhere. Here's how:
- Tip: free sites at yourusername.pythonanywhere.com already have HTTPS, you don't need letsencrypt for them.
We use a package called "dehydrated" to get our Let's Encrypt certificate (we don't use the standard one because it needs all kinds root privileges). To get it, run the following in a Bash console in your home directory:
git clone https://github.com/lukas2511/dehydrated.git ~/dehydrated
Now we need some directories to store our keys, certificates and associated files:
mkdir -p ~/letsencrypt/wellknown
cd ~/letsencrypt
You'll also need your PythonAnywhere site to be able to serve static
files from your wellknown directory. Head over to web app tab and set up a new
mapping (replacing "YOURUSERNAME" with your actual username):
- Static URL:
/.well-known/acme-challenge - Static Path:
/home/YOURUSERNAME/letsencrypt/wellknown
The static files table should look like this (with a different username in the second column):
If you're using our password-protection feature for your web app, you'll also need to switch that off for the duration of this procedure; you can turn it on again once you've got the certificate.
Next, reload your web app using the button at the top of the page.
Now we'll need to create a simple config file. Go back to the Bash console, and create it like this (replacing "YOURUSERNAME" with your actual username):
echo WELLKNOWN=/home/YOURUSERNAME/letsencrypt/wellknown > ~/letsencrypt/config
Next, if this is the first time you've ever created a Let's Encrypt certificate from PythonAnywhere, you need to register with them by running this command:
~/dehydrated/dehydrated --register --accept-terms
Now we need to actually request a certificate (replace "WWW.YOURDOMAIN.COM" with the actual hostname of your website as it's specified on the "Web" page):
~/dehydrated/dehydrated --config ~/letsencrypt/config --cron --domain WWW.YOURDOMAIN.COM --out ~/letsencrypt --challenge http-01
If you get a warning saying something like this:
To use dehydrated with this certificate authority you have to agree to their terms of service which you can find here: https://letsencrypt.org/documents/LE-SA-v1.1.1-August-1-2016.pdf To accept these terms of service run `/home/username/dehydrated/dehydrated --register --accept-terms`.
...then it's probably because you haven't registered -- you need to run the version of the command above (with the "--register" and "--accept-terms" flags), and then run the dehydrated command to request the certificate again.
If this is successful, you will see something like this:
# INFO: Using main config file /home/YOURUSERNAME/letsencrypt/config # Processing www.yourdomain.com # + Checking domain name(s) of existing cert... unchanged. # + Checking expire date of existing cert... # + Valid till Nov 3 13:48:00 2016 GMT (Less than 30 days). Renewing! # + Signing domains... # + Generating private key... # + Generating signing request... # + Requesting challenge for www.yourdomain.com... # + Responding to challenge for www.yourdomain.com... # + Challenge is valid! # + Requesting certificate... # + Checking certificate... # + Done! # + Creating fullchain.pem... # + Done!
You'll now have a directory named www.yourdomain.com in
your letsencrypt directory and your certificate and key will be in there.
-
Keep your
/home/YOURUSERNAME/letsencryptdirectory safe. It contains the information necessary for you to renew your certs.
To get your certificate installed email support@pythonanywhere.com to let us know that you want us to install your certificate. Include your username, the directory path to the certificates, and the domain name and we'll do the rest.
Certificate renewal
To renew your certificate, assuming you've left the static file mapping in
place and still have your letsencrypt and letsencrypt.sh directories, you
just need to re-run:
cd ~/letsencrypt
~/dehydrated/dehydrated --cron --domain www.yourdomain.com --out . --challenge http-01
and then let us know that you have a new certificate and where we can find it.
Checking expiration date
Forgot when your certificate will expire?
Assuming your files are in the default directories, you can run this command:
openssl x509 -enddate -noout -in ~/letsencrypt/www.yourdomain.com/cert.pem
and if you have multiple domains, you can create a bash script like this:
echo www.domain1.com expires $(openssl x509 -enddate -noout -in ~/letsencrypt/www.domain1.com/cert.pem) echo www.domain2.com expires $(openssl x509 -enddate -noout -in ~/letsencrypt/www.domain2.com/cert.pem) echo www.domain3.com expires $(openssl x509 -enddate -noout -in ~/letsencrypt/www.domain3.com/cert.pem)
which you can run with bash check_expirations.sh