How to revoke certificates and uninstall discourse?

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Removing Discourse and Revoking Let’s Encrypt Certificates

A user, Danran, wants to completely uninstall Discourse from their Ubuntu Server and revoke the associated Let’s Encrypt certificates. supermathie advises that revoking the certificates is not strictly necessary, but provides a link to Let’s Encrypt’s revocation guide for those who wish to do so.

However, Danran points out that not revoking the certificates could cause issues if they want to set up another server with the same domain name, as Let’s Encrypt may not reissue the certificates. supermathie corrects this, stating that Let’s Encrypt will reissue the certificates regardless.

To completely uninstall Discourse, it is sufficient to remove the containers, volumes, and the Discourse install directory. As an alternative, users can copy the Let’s Encrypt directory out of the container and archive it to reuse the key and certificate or issue a revoke.

1

I have discourse installed on an Ubuntu 20.04 Server cloud instance, and I now want to completely remove it. I don’t want to just remove the discourse directory, because I know it contains active ssl certificates from letsencrypt. My question is, how exactly do I remove the discourse letsencrypt certificates from my discourse installation that were setup while running the discourse setup script. And.. How then, do I completely uninstall discourse from my Ubuntu Server?

2

There’s negligible risk in not revoking the certificates. Without the private key, they’re useless.

If you want to, you can follow:

Removing the containers, volumes, and then the Discourse install directory will be sufficient to complete uninstall.

3

But if I don’t revoke the certificates, and want to set up another server with the same domain name, letsencrypt won’t reissue those certificates again unless the initial certs are revoked correct?

4

They’ll reissue them.

If you’re unsure, you can copy the Let’s Encrypt directory out of the container and archive it, either to reuse the key & certificate or issue a revoke.

5

Okay thank you! I will just do that.