cron jobs for let's encrypt ssl renewal with mongod on nginx

Question

I've got a parse-server up and running on digital ocean following this guide . When configuring mongo db for migration you execute this command:

sudo cat /etc/letsencrypt/archive/domain_name/{fullchain1.pem,privkey1.pem} | sudo tee /etc/ssl/mongo.pem

After that the tutorial says:

You will have to repeat the above command after renewing your Let's Encrypt certificate. If you configure auto-renewal of the Let's Encrypt certificate, remember to include this operation.

In order to do this I added a cronjob to my let's encrypt cronjobs like this:

30 2 * * 1 /opt/letsencrypt/letsencrypt-auto renew >> /var/log/le-renew.log
33 2 * * 1 cat /etc/letsencrypt/archive/DOMAIN/{fullchain1.pem,privkey1.pem} | tee /etc/ssl/mongo.pem
35 2 * * 1 /etc/init.d/nginx reload

However after restarting the server on a monday, mongod wouldn't start because it couldn't find/read /etc/ssl/mongo.pem .

How do I set this up correctly? Do I need to chown/chmod the file in another cronjob?

Thanks for your help!

Answer 1

I ran into a problem with the script above. Unfortunately let's encrypt doens't override fullchain and privkey but adds new versions when certificate is due to renew: fullchain2.pem privkey2.pem

So I had to alter the script accordingly. I also put the renew and nginx part inside so we need only one cronjob:

#!/bin/bash

# stop nginx
/etc/init.d/nginx stop

# check for new cert
/opt/letsencrypt/letsencrypt-auto renew >> /var/log/le-renew.log

# combine latest letsencrypt files for mongo

# find latest fullchain*.pem
newestFull=$(ls -v /etc/letsencrypt/live/DOMAIN/fullchain*.pem | tail -n 1)
echo "$newestFull"

# find latest privkey*.pem
newestPriv=$(ls -v /etc/letsencrypt/live/DOMAIN/privkey*.pem | tail -n 1)
echo "$newestPriv"

# combine to mongo.pem
cat {$newestFull,$newestPriv} | tee /etc/ssl/mongo.pem

# set rights for mongo.pem 
chmod 600 /etc/ssl/mongo.pem
chown mongodb:mongodb /etc/ssl/mongo.pem

# restart mongo
/sbin/restart mongod

# start nginx
/etc/init.d/nginx start

Answer 2

Ok, so here is what I ended up with. I wrote a little script:

#!/bin/bash

# combine letsencrypt files for mongo
cat /etc/letsencrypt/archive/DOMAIN/{fullchain1.pem,privkey1.pem} | tee /etc/ssl/mongo.pem

# set rights for mongo.pem 
chmod 600 /etc/ssl/mongo.pem
chown mongodb:mongodb /etc/ssl/mongo.pem

# restart mongo
/sbin/restart mongod

and fire it with a cron job:

30 2 * * 1 /opt/letsencrypt/letsencrypt-auto renew >> /var/log/le-renew.log
33 2 * * 1 cat /root/myScript
35 2 * * 1 /etc/init.d/nginx reload