Certbot --apache fails with error message

Please fill out the fields below so we can help you better. Note: you must provide your domain name to get help. Domain names for issued certificates are all made public in Certificate Transparency logs (e.g. https://crt.sh/?q=example.com), so withholding your domain name here does not increase secrecy, but only makes it harder for us to provide help.

My domain is:

I ran this command:

It produced this output: josepy.errors.DeserializationError: Deserialization error: The following fields are required: creation_dt,creation_host
[When first installed, I was able to create 4 certificates successfully. When I returned a few days later I started getting this error message and it has persisted.]

My web server is (include version):

The operating system my web server runs on is (include version): ubuntu 24.04 w/apache

My hosting provider, if applicable, is:

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):

The version of my client is (e.g. output of certbot --version or certbot-auto --version if you're using Certbot): 4.1.1

1 Like

Welcome @krigdonw

I don't have any suggestions except to say if no one else here offers help you should try posting on the EFF's Github for Certbot. This sounds like some kind of packaging or installation problem.

Be sure to explain how you installed Certbot when posting there (snap, pip, ...). GitHub · Where software is built

Further details about your install method might allow someone else here to help too.

1 Like

Sounds like your account data in /etc/letsencrypt/accounts/ has been damaged somehow.

Please check the contents of the relevant meta.json file for obvious errors.

2 Likes