Renewing a Certbot Letsencrypt Webserver Certificate

Situation: 2019-0417: I run my own webserver and my SSL/TLS encryption certificates expired.

Background: I like to use certbot to create and manage my SSL/TLS certificates and the certificates expire every 90 days. Certbot is an easy-to-use automatic client that fetches and deploys SSL/TLS certificates for your web server. https://certbot.eff.org/about/

My server is running:
Linux server 4.17.0-1-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.17.8-1 (2018-07-20) x86_64 GNU/Linux
Distributor ID: Debian
Description:    Debian GNU/Linux testing (buster)
Release:        testing
Codename:       buster

Assessment: I will outline the steps I took for renewing my certificate.

Implementation: All commands are run in a terminal.

1. stop the apache web server

systemctl stop apache2

2. View the certificates installed and see their expiration date

certbot certificates 

3. certbot command to renew certificate

certbot certonly --cert-name [name-of-your-certificate-here] --force-renewal 

You get the following output

How would you like to authenticate with the ACME CA?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
1: Apache Web Server plugin (apache)
2: Spin up a temporary webserver (standalone)
3: Place files in webroot directory (webroot)

my selection:

choose option 2 "Spin up a temporary webserver (standalone)"   

3. restart apache2

 systemctl start apache2  

4. View certificate and check new date

 certbot certificates  

5. Check certificate at ssl labs

https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest

Finished 2019-0417

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