I'm still running into issues.
I ran:
certbot --apache
and followed the setup for all my sites.
I could not find any other reference on plugins.
Then I ran
sudo certbot renew --dry-run
At the end, certbot shows having started Apache again, but it is not running - I had to manually start it again - see the commands and output I used:
Running post-hook command: systemctl start apache2
3 renew failure(s), 0 parse failure(s)
myuser@myserver:/var/log$ systemctl status apache2
● apache2.service - The Apache HTTP Server
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/apache2.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: inactive (dead) since Tue 2021-05-18 16:26:58 UTC; 9s ago
Process: 24710 ExecStop=/usr/sbin/apachectl stop (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Process: 24706 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/apachectl start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 24543 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
May 18 16:26:58 myserver systemd[1]: Starting The Apache HTTP Server...
May 18 16:26:58 myserver apachectl[24706]: httpd (pid 24651) already running
May 18 16:26:58 myserver systemd[1]: Started The Apache HTTP Server.
myuser@myserver:/var/log$ sudo systemctl start apache2
myuser@myserver:/var/log$ systemctl status apache2
● apache2.service - The Apache HTTP Server
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/apache2.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Tue 2021-05-18 16:27:17 UTC; 5s ago
Process: 24710 ExecStop=/usr/sbin/apachectl stop (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Process: 24723 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/apachectl start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 24727 (apache2)
Tasks: 6 (limit: 4915)
CGroup: /system.slice/apache2.service
├─24727 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
├─24728 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
├─24729 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
├─24730 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
├─24731 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
└─24732 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
May 18 16:27:17 myserver systemd[1]: Starting The Apache HTTP Server...
May 18 16:27:17 myserver systemd[1]: Started The Apache HTTP Server.
myuser@myserver:/var/log$
Also, I just checked, and the other methods you mentioned are not available on my server:
myuser@myserver:/var/log$ apachectl
-bash: apachectl: command not found
myuser@myserver:/var/log$ apache2ctl
-bash: apache2ctl: command not found
Please let me know what I'm doing wrong.
Thanks!