Recipesslsecuritycertbotmaintenance

Auto-Renew Let's Encrypt SSL

Cron job to automatically renew Let's Encrypt SSL certificates.

Let's Encrypt certificates expire every 90 days. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recommends running the renewal command twice daily. The `--quiet` flag ensures the command only outputs text if an error occurs, keeping your cron logs clean.

Cron Schedule

Every 12 hours0 */12 * * *

Runs every 12 hour(s) at minute 0.

Learn more about Every 12 hours

Command to Run

Copy and paste this command into your crontab or automation script

certbot renew --quiet

This command will run according to the cron schedule above.

Implementation Examples

Here are code examples for implementing this cron job in different programming languages:

Unix/Linux Crontab

# Edit your crontab with: crontab -e
# Add this line to run "Every 12 hours"
0 */12 * * * /path/to/script.sh

Python (with schedule library)

# Using the 'schedule' library
import schedule
import time

def job():
    print("Running task: Every 12 hours")

# Note: Python's schedule lib uses natural language,
# but for raw cron execution use 'python-crontab':
# from crontab import CronTab
# cron = CronTab(user='root')
# job = cron.new(command='python job.py')
# job.setall('0 */12 * * *')

Node.js (with node-cron)

// Using 'node-cron'
const cron = require('node-cron');

cron.schedule('0 */12 * * *', () => {
  console.log('Running task: Every 12 hours');
});

Go (with robfig/cron)

// Using 'robfig/cron'
c := cron.New()
c.AddFunc("0 */12 * * *", func() {
    fmt.Println("Running task: Every 12 hours")
})
c.Start()

GitHub Actions Workflow

# .github/workflows/cron.yml
name: Every 12 hours
on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 */12 * * *'
jobs:
  cron:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - run: echo "Running Every 12 hours"