How do we begin?

customerassistance · November 4, 2015, 11:47pm

Apologies in advance, I’m sure this information is here somewhere, but I have not been able to find it.

So I have received the beta invitation to use Let’s Encrypt what do I do now?

I have spoken to Hostgator (my hosting company) and they say they will install the certificate (for $10). How do I go about getting the certificate?

kamaradski · November 4, 2015, 11:59pm

For 10$ I would expect them to run the software and automate it. Installing a SSL certificate that you hand them ready-made is no where near worth 10$.

99% of all hosters provide some sort of webinterface to install the certificate yourself, or they install it for you for free. 10$ is a rip-off in my eyes, not to mention the fact you will be repeating this process probably every 60 days or so.

Anyway you will require some Linux machine to run the certificate software, or install a Docker host to simulate one.

Use the userguide (https://letsencrypt.readthedocs.org/en/latest/using.html) for a good start, and read the welcome-email you have received, it contains many clues on what to do next.

customerassistance · November 5, 2015, 12:30am

Thanks very much for that. Unfortunately my technical knowledge was not up to understanding the welcome - email. The User guide is much more helpful, but still slightly beyond my grasp. I have access to the (shared) webserver via cPanel and WHM, Is this insufficient to install git and letsencrypt-auto? Do I need to wait for some kind of cPanel plug in before I can use these certs?

Freeboots · November 5, 2015, 11:56am

Im also having a stab at this. So far I am stuck on dependencies:

Activate shell access via your Customer Dashboard (if you havnt already).
SSH into your server using Terminal or PuTTY. Use port 2222 for Shared and Reseller accounts, or port 22 for Dedicated and VPS. Use your cPanel username:

Via terminal:

ssh -p 2222 cPanelUsername@YourDomain.com

Or in PuTTY enter your domain under Host Name, then go to Connection > Data > Auto-login Username and add your cPanel Username

Use cPanel password
git clone https://github.com/letsencrypt/letsencrypt
cd letsencrypt

./letsencrypt-auto --agree-dev-preview --server
https://acme-v01.api.letsencrypt.org/directory auth
Here is where things go wrong for me:

updating letsencrypt and virtual environment dependencies…/letsencrypt-auto: line 88 /path/letsencrypt/bin/pip: No such file or directory

After digging around, its the /bin thats not there.

So I guess I dont have the dependencies / prerequisites? and… i dont know how to get them.
PS: I have no idea what im doing. Any help most appreciated!

tpiardi · December 4, 2015, 9:01am

Did you managed to install the certificate?

I’m too starting to try to install a certificate on hostgator, but no luck till now.

michaelrowe01 · March 17, 2016, 7:39pm

I am also trying to do this... I see a bunch of warnings... Pasting here for others:

Unpacking /tmp/peep-mYUykJ/argparse-1.4.0.tar.gz
Running setup.py egg_info for package from file:///tmp/peep-mYUykJ/argparse-1.4.0.tar.gz
warning: no previously-included files matching '*.pyc' found anywhere in distribution
warning: no previously-included files matching '*.pyo' found anywhere in distribution
warning: no previously-included files matching '*.orig' found anywhere in distribution
warning: no previously-included files matching '*.rej' found anywhere in distribution
no previously-included directories found matching 'doc/_build'
no previously-included directories found matching 'env24'
no previously-included directories found matching 'env25'
no previously-included directories found matching 'env26'
no previously-included directories found matching 'env27'
Installing collected packages: argparse
Running setup.py install for argparse
warning: no previously-included files matching '*.pyc' found anywhere in distribution
warning: no previously-included files matching '*.pyo' found anywhere in distribution
warning: no previously-included files matching '*.orig' found anywhere in distribution
warning: no previously-included files matching '*.rej' found anywhere in distribution
no previously-included directories found matching 'doc/_build'
no previously-included directories found matching 'env24'
no previously-included directories found matching 'env25'
no previously-included directories found matching 'env26'
no previously-included directories found matching 'env27'
Could not find .egg-info directory in install record for argparse==1.4.0 from file:///tmp/peep-mYUykJ/argparse-1.4.0.tar.gz
Successfully installed argparse
Cleaning up...
Unpacking /tmp/peep-8CsZpZ/pycparser-2.14.tar.gz
Running setup.py egg_info for package from file:///tmp/peep-8CsZpZ/pycparser-2.14.tar.gz
warning: no previously-included files matching 'yacctab.*' found under directory 'tests'
warning: no previously-included files matching 'lextab.*' found under directory 'tests'
warning: no previously-included files matching 'yacctab.*' found under directory 'examples'
warning: no previously-included files matching 'lextab.*' found under directory 'examples'
Installing collected packages: pycparser
Running setup.py install for pycparser
warning: no previously-included files matching 'yacctab.*' found under directory 'tests'
warning: no previously-included files matching 'lextab.*' found under directory 'tests'
warning: no previously-included files matching 'yacctab.*' found under directory 'examples'
warning: no previously-included files matching 'lextab.*' found under directory 'examples'
Build the lexing/parsing tables
Could not find .egg-info directory in install record for pycparser==2.14 from file:///tmp/peep-8CsZpZ/pycparser-2.14.tar.gz
Successfully installed pycparser
Cleaning up...
Unpacking /tmp/peep-RaNTye/cffi-1.4.2.tar.gz
Running setup.py egg_info for package from file:///tmp/peep-RaNTye/cffi-1.4.2.tar.gz
Package libffi was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing libffi.pc' to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable No package 'libffi' found Package libffi was not found in the pkg-config search path. Perhaps you should add the directory containing libffi.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
No package 'libffi' found
Package libffi was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing libffi.pc' to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable No package 'libffi' found Package libffi was not found in the pkg-config search path. Perhaps you should add the directory containing libffi.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
No package 'libffi' found
Package libffi was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `libffi.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
No package 'libffi' found
unable to execute 'gcc': Permission denied
unable to execute 'gcc': Permission denied
    No working compiler found, or bogus compiler options
    passed to the compiler from Python's distutils module.
    See the error messages above.
    (If they are about -mno-fused-madd and you are on OS/X 10.8,
    see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22313407/ .)
Complete output from command python setup.py egg_info:
Package libffi was not found in the pkg-config search path.

This looks like potentially the same issues from @freeboots above. Has this been resolved?