Certbot put challenge in wrong place?

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1

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My domain is: netbox.over.ru

I ran this command: certbot --test-cert -d netbox.over.ru

It produced this output:

Requesting a certificate for netbox.over.ru

Certbot failed to authenticate some domains (authenticator: nginx). The Certificate Authority reported these problems:
Domain: netbox.over.ru
Type: unauthorized
Detail: 88.212.205.9: Invalid response from http://netbox.over.ru/.well-known/acme-challenge/-PGCpIweswZ274_JX8CdhcaEj6Wtte85EPvT98OFML8: 404

Hint: The Certificate Authority failed to verify the temporary nginx configuration changes made by Certbot. Ensure the listed domains point to this nginx server and that it is accessible from the internet.

Some challenges have failed.
Ask for help or search for solutions at https://community.letsencrypt.org. See the logfile /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log or re-run Certbot with -v for more details.

My web server is (include version): nginx/1.26.2

The operating system my web server runs on is (include version): FreeBSD 14.2-RELEASE

My hosting provider, if applicable, is: self-hosted

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 4.0.0

I'm 100% sure that paths are correct.

root@gab2:/usr/local/www # ls -ls /usr/local/www/nginx/.well-known/acme-challenge/test
1 -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 29 May 22 22:35 /usr/local/www/nginx/.well-known/acme-challenge/test
root@gab2:/usr/local/www # curl http://netbox.over.ru/.well-known/acme-challenge/test
Thu May 22 22:35:57 MSK 2025

Looks like certbot puts challenge in some wrong place.

I explicitly specify root for .well-known

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name netbox.over.ru;
    location /.well-known {
        root /usr/local/www/nginx;
    }
    location / {
        proxy_pass http://10.145.1.38;
    }
}
2

if you set explict path for challenges try use --webroot option.

2 Likes
3

My fault, I had to specify exact IP for listen.