Install an SSL certificate on Linux

It’s important to use SSL any time sensitive data is involved such as personal information, and authentication credentials such as passwords.
Your Linux system should be:

• running Ubuntu or RHEL
• accessible over the internet
• using a valid DNS entry that points to your Linux system
  
  

1. Copy the SSL certificate provided by your certification provider and SSL private key file to the apache directory. The certificate file is renamed as server.crt and private key file is renamed as server.key

   etcssl=/etc/apache2/ssl # for Ubuntu
   etcssl=/etc/httpd/ssl   # for RHEL
   sudo mkdir -p $etcssl
   sudo cp server.crt $etcssl
   sudo cp server.key $etcssl

2. If your signed certificate needs a certificate chain file containing all the intermediate certificates, then you need to install the certificate chain file as well.
   

   sudo echo >> $etcssl/server.crt
   sudo cat server-ca.crt >> $etcssl/server.crt

3. Modify your webserver configuration. ServerName must match the server name in the SSL certificate.
   
   Ubuntu 22.04 or higher: Add this code to /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default-conf
   

   Ubuntu 22.04 or higher

   <VirtualHost *:443>
   # Admin email, Server Name (domain name) and any aliases
    ServerAdmin support@xyz.com
    ServerName server1.xyz.com
   # Index file and Document Root (where the public files are located)
    DirectoryIndex index.php
   DocumentRoot /var/www/html
    <Directory /var/www/html>
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    AllowOverride All
    Order allow,deny
    allow from all
    </Directory>
   
    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
   # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
    # alert, emerg.
    LogLevel warn
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
   
    SSLEngine On
    SSLCertificateFile /etc/apache2/ssl/server.crt
    SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/apache2/ssl/server.key
    
   </VirtualHost>

   
   RHEL 9.0 or higher: Replace the SSLCertificateFile and SSLCertificateKeyFile lines in /etc/httpd/conf.d/ssl.conf with the following:

   RHEL 9.0 or higher

   SSLCertificateFile /etc/httpd/ssl/server.crt
   SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/httpd/ssl/server.key

4. Restart Apache.

   sudo systemctl restart apache2 # for Ubuntu
   sudo systemctl restart httpd   # for RHEL