Restart Apache or Nginx web server without password prompt

After installing SSL certificates on my Nginx server, I've started to experience some minor "annoyance" of being prompted for

Enter PEM pass phrase:

each time when I have to restart the web server.

This can be an issue when the server got rebooted and the web server will only activate with human intervention and restart not automatically.

To fix this, you need to remove the password from the server .key file

> cp server.key server.key-withpassword

Strip out the password:

> openssl rsa -in server.key-withpassword -out server.key and [enter the passpassword]

After this step, you should be able to restart your web server (Apache or Nginx) without being prompted for password.

However, make sure that the server.key file is only accessible by trusted party... like a root user since the private key file is no longer encrypted!