Certbot Log says "Notifying user" but how is it notifying me?

rorrison · April 24, 2025, 8:14am

Certbot is working fine for me at present, but I've had problems in the past. In letsencrypt.log I see lines saying "Notifying user" and various messages. The only way I see those lines is by looking at the log - I'm not actually notified in any way that I have found.

What is supposed to happen when certbot writes "Notifying user" lines to the log? Is there supposed to be some notification, or is it just a log entry? Here's an example of the kind of lines I'm seeing: (lines are truncated to ssh window width)

2025-04-16 08:53:46,579:DEBUG:certbot._internal.display.obj:Notifying user:
Successfully received certificate.
Certificate is saved at: /etc/letsencrypt/live/mail.lakelandleather.co.uk/fullc$
Key is saved at: /etc/letsencrypt/live/mail.lakelandleather.co.uk/privk$
This certificate expires on 2025-07-15.
These files will be updated when the certificate renews.
Certbot has set up a scheduled task to automatically renew this certificate in $

I'd love to receive those notification lines by email.

My domain is: mail.lakelandleather.co.uk
The operating system my web server runs on is (include version): Debian 12.10
I can login to a root shell on my machine (yes or no, or I don't know): yes
The version of my client is: certbot 2.1.0
I'm using the dns-dnsimple authenticator

webprofusion · April 24, 2025, 9:08am

github.com/certbot/certbot

certbot/src/certbot/_internal/display/obj.py

16f858547


      
          :param bool wrap: Whether or not the application should wrap text
          :param bool force_interactive: True if it's safe to prompt the user
              because it won't cause any workflow regressions
          :param bool decorate: Whether to surround the message with a
              decorated frame
          
          """
          if wrap:
              message = util.wrap_lines(message)
          
          logger.debug("Notifying user: %s", message)
          
          self.outfile.write(
              (("{line}{frame}{line}" if decorate else "") +
               "{msg}{line}" +
               ("{frame}{line}" if decorate else ""))
                  .format(line=os.linesep, frame=SIDE_FRAME, msg=message)
          )
          self.outfile.flush()
          
          if pause:

More a question for the Certbot developers, not strictly Let's Encrypt.

rorrison · April 24, 2025, 10:42am

The function that code is in makes it look like it's just a notification when certbot is used interactively. There doesn't seem to be any non-interactive notification beyond output and logging. I'll write a script to check the log file regularly to notify me of failures. Thanks!

Osiris · April 24, 2025, 10:58am

Those are just debugging messages. The same message without the debugging "notifying" part should be right below it.

The debugging messages shouldn't show up on your console, only in the log.

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Certbot Log says "Notifying user" but how is it notifying me?

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