Mac OS - Generate Lets Encrypt SSL Certificate

Mac OS - Generate Lets Encrypt SSL Certificate

 

This is a guide on setting up free SSL certificate for Accessit Web App using Let’s Encrypt on Mac Servers. Generated certificates will also renew automatically. 


 Requirements: 


  1. Accessit Web App must be available from the internet on port 80. Please see this article for more information: https://desk.zoho.com/portal/accessitsoftware/kb/articles/enabling-access-to-the-accessit-web-app-from-the-internet 
  2. Domain name you wish to use for SSL certificate has to be assigned external IP and ideally also to internal IP of the Windows server/machine (Example: library.wellington.school.nz ) 
  3. Scripts for exporting certificate as .pfx. You can download them from: https://accessitsoftware.com/updates/reference/accessit-ssl-mac.zip 
  4. Install Homebrew for Mac OS: https://brew.sh/ 

Steps: 


1: Check external connection

Make sure that you can successfully load your Accessit Web App on port 80 from the internet. 
In this guide we’ll be using http://library.accessit.online 


 


If your Web App is using a different port externally (2000, 2001, 8080) then you’ll have to make changes in your Port Forwarding rules and Accessit Web App configuration.  Details are available in: https://desk.zoho.com/portal/accessitsoftware/kb/articles/v9-change-web-app-port 


You can also keep current port that is currently in use and specify additional connector in the server.xml file.  

sudo nano /usr/local/accessit/tomee/conf/server.xml 

Duplicate current <Connector entry and change port to 80. 

 

Save the file and restart Accessit Web Service. 

sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.accessitsoftware.tomee.plist 

sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.accessitsoftware.tomee.plist 


2: Install Certbot

Make sure that you have Homebrew installed and then install certbot 


brew install letsencrypt 


Unpack downloaded zip file ( https://accessitsoftware.com/updates/reference/accessit-ssl-mac.zip )  
and save two scripts inside into /usr/local/accessit/Scripts folder. Then edit the accessit-ssl-export.sh file and update DOMAIN and PASSWORD variables. Domain must match publicly assigned domain. 


 
 

3: Stop Accessit Web Service

sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.accessitsoftware.tomee.plist 


4: Generate Certificate

sudo certbot certonly –standalone 


Follow the steps in certbot. At the end of the process, you should see Congratulations message. 


5: Exporting

Export the certificate in the .pfx format by running: 

sudo /usr/local/accessit/Scripts/accessit-ssl-export.sh  

 
Then go to C:\Program Files\Access-It Software\Accessit\tomee\conf folder and check if certificate was successfully generated. 
 
If it’s there, then you can enable it in your Accessit Web App config (server.xml) by following steps in following article: https://desk.zoho.com/portal/accessitsoftware/kb/articles/v9-web-app-setting-up-https-ssl 


5: Automatic Renewal

To setup automatic renewal of the Let's Encrypt certificate run this command: 


echo "0 0,12 * * * root python -c 'import random; import time; time.sleep(random.random() * 3600)' && certbot renew --pre-hook '/usr/local/accessit/Scripts/accessit-web-stop.sh' --post-hook '/usr/local/accessit/Scripts/accessit-ssl-export.sh'" | sudo tee -a /etc/crontab > /dev/null 

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