So I fixed my problem. don't know if this is what others are experiencing but in mattermost-ssl ssl_certificate points to cert.pem but should be changed to fullchain as in the documentation. there may be a difference in ciphers too. Here is what worked for me:
server {
listen 80;
server_name mattermost.example.com;
return 301 https://$server_name$request_uri;
}
server {
listen 443 ssl;
server_name mattermost.example.com;
ssl on;
ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomainname/fullchain.pem;
ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomainname/privkey.pem;
ssl_session_timeout 5m;
ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
ssl_ciphers 'EECDH+AESGCM:EDH+AESGCM:AES256+EECDH:AES256+EDH';
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:10m;
location / {
gzip off;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Ssl on;
client_max_body_size 50M;
proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
proxy_set_header X-Frame-Options SAMEORIGIN;
proxy_pass http://app:APP_PORT;
}
}
Could be other differences too like the SSL listen port. But using this with my domain name instead of just changing my domain name in the existing file works.