Certbot not authenticating my wild card domain

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My domain is: Onecoycloud.xyz

I ran this command: certbot certonly --manual --preferred-challenges=dns -d *.onecoycloud.xyz

It produced this output: Certbot failed to authenticate some domains (authenticator: manual). The Certificate Authority reported these problems:
Domain: onecoycloud.xyz
Type: unauthorized
Detail: Incorrect TXT record "v=spf1 +a +mx +ip4:203.161.62.193 include:spf.web-hosting.com ~all" found at _acme-challenge.onecoycloud.xyz

Hint: The Certificate Authority failed to verify the manually created DNS TXT records. Ensure that you created these in the correct location, or try waiting longer for DNS propagation on the next attempt.

My web server is (include version): Apache2

The operating system my web server runs on is (include version): Ubuntu 19

My hosting provider, if applicable, is: Namecheap

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): certbot 1.21.0

That error message seems very clear. certbot would have instructed you to create a completely different TXT record; why didn't you do that?

5 Likes

Hi @danb35, and welcome to the LE community forum :slight_smile:

Did you follow the instructions?
Does your DSP allow for more than one TXT record?
I mean I can see why you would need that current TXT record - and you shouldn't have to remove it get a cert [using DNS-01 authentication].

1 Like

I can't. That's a SPF record for _acme-challenge.onecoycloud.xyz, which would only make sense if OP were planning on having mail sent with a return address at that subdomain--which doesn't seem likely at all.

3 Likes

In addition to @danb35 comments about the TXT record, you probably want to add your root domain to that command. A wildcard name only covers domain names with something in place of the "*" and not the root itself.

That is, it covers www.onecoycloud.xyz or someother.onecoycloud.xyz but not onecoycloud.xyz itself

So, like this

certbot certonly --manual --preferred-challenges=dns -d onecoycloud.xyz -d *.onecoycloud.xyz
2 Likes

Only is a strong word...
I can think of one other way that would makes sense.
Like: To cover any and all possible [mis]uses of their domain, they would use a wildcard SPF record.
So, if anyone tries to spoof "random.sender@some.non-existing.subdomain.example.com", the wildcard SPF entry will protect from that attempt as well.

1 Like

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