Enable TLS/SSL on Nginx – Ubuntu 24.04

Prerequisites

Nginx running on Ubuntu 24.04
A valid domain name pointing to your server IP

Step 1 – Obtain a certificate with Certbot

See Install Certbot with Nginx on Ubuntu 24.04 for the full Certbot setup. For a quick test with a self-signed certificate:

openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:2048 \
    -keyout /etc/ssl/private/nginx-selfsigned.key \
    -out /etc/ssl/certs/nginx-selfsigned.crt \
    -subj "/CN=example.com"

Step 2 – Generate DH parameters (recommended)

openssl dhparam -out /etc/ssl/certs/dhparam.pem 2048

Step 3 – Update the server block

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name example.com www.example.com;
    return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}

server {
    listen 443 ssl http2;
    server_name example.com www.example.com;

    ssl_certificate     /etc/ssl/certs/nginx-selfsigned.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/private/nginx-selfsigned.key;
    ssl_dhparam         /etc/ssl/certs/dhparam.pem;

    ssl_protocols       TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3;
    ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
    ssl_ciphers         HIGH:!aNULL:!MD5;
    ssl_session_cache   shared:SSL:10m;
    ssl_session_timeout 10m;

    add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=63072000; includeSubDomains" always;
    add_header X-Frame-Options DENY;
    add_header X-Content-Type-Options nosniff;

    root  /var/www/example.com/html;
    index index.html;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }
}

Step 4 – Test and reload

nginx -t
systemctl reload nginx

Step 5 – Verify with curl

curl -vk https://example.com 2>&1 | grep 'SSL connection'