Migrate your letsencrypt certbot files

Running your webserver over https is so much easier nowadays thanks to letsencrypt.

How do you move your certificates to a new server? Simply copy your ./etc/letsencrypt folder.

Just pay attention to preserve the links.

Either use rsync with the -a option or create a tar archive that you move. If prevent root from ssh-ing into your server, you can create a tar archive and move that.

server1

joe  $ sudo -i
root $ tar -cf /etc/letsencrypt /home/joe/letsencrypt.tar

server 2

joe $ rsync -ave 'ssh' server1:/home/joe/letsencrypt.tar /home/joe/
joe $ sudo -i
root $ cd /etc/
root $ tar -xf /home/joe/letsencrypt.tar .

Now you can test if certbot works

root $ certbot --dry-run renew

It will try to obtain a certificate without installing it.