Docker-letsencrypt-nginx-proxy-companion: Certificate from external providers

[maitrungduc1410]

I'm struggling of using certificate from external providers: I have some sites, all of them use certificate from LetsEncrypt, for my main site I want to use a certificate from Godaddy provider, but I can't find where's instruction for this purpose.

Does this container support this?

Thanks

[buchdag]

Hi.

Sure, let's say you plan on using an external certificate for example.com:

1. You'll need your certificate, private key and optionally chain encoded in PEM format.

2. Create a directory inside /etc/nginx/certs where you'll put those files. Let's name it example.com to follow the same convention as the companion but really any name will do:
   docker exec your-le-container-name mkdir /etc/nginx/certs/example.com

3. Copy your files inside this directory (let say your files are named cert.pem, key.pem and chain.pem):
   docker cp /path/to/your/cert.pem your-le-container-name: /etc/nginx/certs/example.com
docker cp /path/to/your/key.pem your-le-container-name: /etc/nginx/certs/example.com
docker cp /path/to/your/chain.pem your-le-container-name: /etc/nginx/certs/example.com

4. Create symlinks pointing to those file inside /etc/nginx/certs, named after the VIRTUAL_HOST you want this certificate to be used with, /etc/nginx/certs/domain.crt for the certificate, /etc/nginx/certs/domain.key for the private key and /etc/nginx/certs/domain.chain.pem for the optional chain file :
   docker exec your-le-container-name ln -s /etc/nginx/certs/example.com/cert.pem /etc/nginx/certs/example.com.crt
docker exec your-le-container-name ln -s /etc/nginx/certs/example.com/key.pem /etc/nginx/certs/example.com.key
docker exec your-le-container-name ln -s /etc/nginx/certs/example.com/chain.pem /etc/nginx/certs/example.com.chain.pem

5. Reload docker-gen and nginx.

If your certificate is a SAN certificate and cover multiple domains, juste repeat step 4 with symlinks named after the other domains.

[maitrungduc1410]

Thanks @buchdag for a very detail answer, it's working for me

[buchdag]

thank you very much for a detail answer, I'm wondering about 1 point: in step 4 when creating symbolic link for example.com.crt, should it be:

ln -s ./example.com/fullchain.pem example.com.crt
Because I observed other certs (which generated automatically by LetsEncrypt), they're linked like that.

You are right the container use relative paths for the symlinks. Absolute path are easier for a quick docker exec example, but if you'd rather have relative path symlink you can create them like this:

docker exec -w /etc/nginx/certs your-le-container-name ln -s ./example.com/cert.pem example.com.crt

Add the -f flag to ln (in addition to -s, so ln -sf) if you want to replace existing symlinks.

[maitrungduc1410]

Thank you

[buchdag]

We should probably cover that in the doc by the way.