Cerbot failed to authenticate and unable to get SSL certicate

Help
1

My domain is: chenhi.info

I ran this command: I was trying to generate SSL cert in the nginx proxy manager and it keeps failing. In the end I used chatgpt for help and it asked me to use the following command below:

sudo certbot certonly \
  --dns-cloudflare \
  --dns-cloudflare-credentials /etc/letsencrypt/cloudflare.ini \
  --dns-cloudflare-propagation-seconds 120 \
  --dry-run \
  -d chenhi.info \
  -d '*.chenhi.info'

It produced this output:

2025-06-29 15:42:01,485:DEBUG:acme.client:Storing nonce: ucHVr3cr7yqJPh-xfQUuQwl9Bns0xFTTdwsxgM7_yXosKVxM6f4
2025-06-29 15:42:01,486:INFO:certbot._internal.auth_handler:Challenge failed for domain chenhi.info
2025-06-29 15:42:01,486:INFO:certbot._internal.auth_handler:Challenge failed for domain chenhi.info
2025-06-29 15:42:01,486:INFO:certbot._internal.auth_handler:dns-01 challenge for chenhi.info
2025-06-29 15:42:01,486:INFO:certbot._internal.auth_handler:dns-01 challenge for chenhi.info
2025-06-29 15:42:01,486:DEBUG:certbot._internal.display.obj:Notifying user: 
Certbot failed to authenticate some domains (authenticator: dns-cloudflare). The Certificate Authority reported these problems:
  Domain: chenhi.info
  Type:   dns
  Detail: DNS problem: NXDOMAIN looking up TXT for _acme-challenge.chenhi.info - check that a DNS record exists for this domain

  Domain: chenhi.info
  Type:   dns
  Detail: DNS problem: NXDOMAIN looking up TXT for _acme-challenge.chenhi.info - check that a DNS record exists for this domain

Hint: The Certificate Authority failed to verify the DNS TXT records created by --dns-cloudflare. Ensure the above domains are hosted by this DNS provider, or try increasing --dns-cloudflare-propagation-seconds (currently 60 seconds).

2025-06-29 15:42:01,487:DEBUG:certbot._internal.error_handler:Encountered exception:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/certbot/_internal/auth_handler.py", line 106, in handle_authorizations
    self._poll_authorizations(authzrs, max_retries, best_effort)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/certbot/_internal/auth_handler.py", line 206, in _poll_authorizations
    raise errors.AuthorizationError('Some challenges have failed.')
certbot.errors.AuthorizationError: Some challenges have failed.

My web server is (include version):

The operating system my web server runs on is (include version): lxc container in proxmox

My hosting provider, if applicable, is: cloudflare

I can login to a root shell on my machine (yes or no, or I don't know): yes

I'm using a control panel to manage my site (no, or provide the name and version of the control panel):no

The version of my client is (e.g. output of certbot --version or certbot-auto --version if you're using Certbot): certbot 2.1.0

2

That command will only work if you're using cloudflare for your DNS, but you aren't. In fact, your domain doesn't seem to be registered at all.

2 Likes
3

thank you so much for pointing that out. I didn't notice it as I have been able to change the dns setting and adding records as well in my cloudflare account for the domain. now i just subscribed and it was successful. thanks again