How to Install Nginx SSL Certificate

All the sites running with SSL are used https protocol on default port 443. SSL provides secure data communication by encrypting data between server and client. This article will help you to configure SSL in Nginx server. For this example we are using a self signed certificate.

Step 1 – Install Nginx Web Server

We are assuming that you already have Nginx installed on your system but in case you don’t have installed it already, Use following command to install it.

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$ sudo apt-get install nginx

Step 2 – Get SSL Certificate

For creating SSL certificate, the first requirement is to create private key and CSR. A CSR is a file which have all details about domain including a public key. first create a directory where to create csr and key.

# mkdir /etc/nginx/ssl/
# cd /etc/nginx/ssl/

Now create CSR and key file with following command. Change name of files example.com.key and example.com.csr as per your domains. This command will ask for enter information about your domain. Read more about creating CSR.

# openssl req -new -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout example.com.key -out example.com.csr

After creating CSR, Request an SSL certificate from any certificate providers like Geotrust, Comodo, Digicert or GoDaddy etc. After getting certificate from CA, combine your primary certificate and intermediate certificate file in single file.

# cat example.com.crt DigiCertCA.crt >> example.com.pem

Step 3: Setup VirtualHost with SSL

Let’s edit Nginx configuration file /etc/nginx/conf.d/example.com.conf and add the following values.

# HTTPS Server Block

server {

    listen   443;
    server_name example.com www.example.com;

    root /var/www/xyz.com/httpdocs;
    index index.html index.htm;

    ssl on;
    ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/example.com.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/example.com.key;
    ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
    ssl_ciphers "HIGH:!aNULL:!MD5 or HIGH:!aNULL:!MD5:!3DES";
    ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
}

Step4 – Restart NGINX

Finally restart nginx server for changes takes effect.

# service nginx restart