A quick post that details a useful operation: copying LetsEncrypt certificates from one machine to another.

(We also cover our use case: setting up certificates for private VPN networks that use public DNS entries.)

HTTPS, SSL Certificates, and LetsEncrypt

As a bit of background, the whole reason this is necessary, the whole reason we are dealing with the hassle of setting up SSL certificates, is to enable end-to-end encrypted connections to a server.

For example …

This post is a preview of a series of posts to come, which will document the process of containerizing the entire charlesreid1.com website.

We will run through a lot of different moving parts and how to get them all working:

• Multiple domains and subdomains pointing to different services
• Docker pod for all services
• Nginx + SSL
• Reverse proxies via nginx
• Apache + MySQL + MediaWiki
• phpMyAdmin
• Gitea
• Configuration files under version control
• Data managed with backup/restore scripts and cron jobs
• Static content under version control
• Files server
• REST API
• Management LAN

All of the code for doing this is in docker …

• Introduction

  • What Does Stunnel Do?
  • How Does Stunnel Work?

• Setting Up an Stunnel Server

  • Charlesreid1.com Resources for Stunnel Servers

• Setting Up an Stunnel Client

• Example Protocols

• Stunnel with Docker

• Troubleshooting Stunnel Connections

• References

Introduction

What Does Stunnel Do?

Stunnel is a tool for creating SSL tunnels between a client and a server.

Creating SSL connections is a general task that is very useful. In particular, any packet of any protocol can always be wrapped in an additional SSL layer, with packets embedded within packets, so this means you can wrap arbitrary traffic protocols in SSL using Stunnel.

Stunnel requires …