Read list of domains from text file and create SSL cert for them

[JustThomas]

Hello everyone,

this a question for bash gurus. I want to create a certificate using the webroot plugin. Basically, what I’d like to do is

certbot certonly --webroot -w /var/www/ -d domain1 -d domain2 -d domain3

However, I don’t want to type in every single domain. I already have a file which contains a list of all the domains (approx. 50 domains, one domain per line):

domain1
domain2
domain3
...

I’m looking for a bash command that reads the list of domains from the file and passes them to certbot so that I don’t have to manually type or copy&paste them one by one.

Thanks in advance,
Thomas

[jmorahan]

You could do something like this:

certbot certonly --webroot -w /var/www/ $(sed 's/^/-d /' domains.txt)

Of course that only works if all your domains use the same webroot.

[JustThomas]

Thank you very much. I'll try this out within the next couple of days.

@jmorahan

Of course that only works if all your domains use the same webroot.

They do. They're all on the same virtual host.

[schoen]

@jmorahan’s solution is excellent!

If you do this, please bear in mind that there is a Let’s Encrypt limit of 100 domains in a single cert, so if you someday acquire more and more domains, there is a limit to the applicability of this or any technique. But you could then split the list into two and just run two commands like @jmorahan’s to acquire two separate certificates.