# Certbot: Requesting support installing wildcard certs on Apache/Ubuntu

**URL:** <https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/certbot-requesting-support-installing-wildcard-certs-on-apache-ubuntu/135380>\
**Category:** Help\
**Created:** [October 6, 2020, 2:34pm UTC](https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/certbot-requesting-support-installing-wildcard-certs-on-apache-ubuntu/135380 "2020-10-06T14:34:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![olspookishmagus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/letsencrypt/user_avatar/community.letsencrypt.org/olspookishmagus/32/43397_2.png) [@olspookishmagus](https://community.letsencrypt.org/u/olspookishmagus)\
**Post date:** [October 6, 2020, 2:34pm UTC](https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/certbot-requesting-support-installing-wildcard-certs-on-apache-ubuntu/135380/1 "2020-10-06T14:34:03Z")

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Hello everyone and a special hello to Let's Encrypt Community's regulars.

I am trying to create a wildcard certification for a domains ending with: "\*.foo.bar" with no success, as follows:

My domain is:  
`*.foo.bar`

I ran this command:  
`$ sudo certbot --apache -d '*.foo.bar'`

It produced this output:  
`...`  
`Client with the currently selected authenticator does not support any combination of challenges that will satisfy the CA. You may need to use an authenticator plugin that can do challenges over DNS.`

The operating system my web server runs on is (include version):  
`Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS`

My web server is:  
`Apache/2.4.29 (Ubuntu)`

My hosting provider, if applicable, is:  
COSMOTE (if using those DNS servers: `172.30.47.4` and `172.30.47.5`)

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 1.8.0 (installed via snap)`

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**Author:** ![griffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/letsencrypt/user_avatar/community.letsencrypt.org/griffin/32/50204_2.png) [@griffin](https://community.letsencrypt.org/u/griffin)\
**Post date:** [October 6, 2020, 2:46pm UTC](https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/certbot-requesting-support-installing-wildcard-certs-on-apache-ubuntu/135380/2 "2020-10-06T14:46:05Z")

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Welcome to the Let's Encrypt Community, Sophoklis 🙂

The apache authentication method cannot update your DNS records to add the necessary `_acme-challenge.foo.bar` TXT record.

If you know your DNS provider, you might be able to [use a plugin specific to your DNS provider](https://certbot.eff.org/docs/using.html#dns-plugins). Other options are also possible, such as [acme-dns](https://github.com/joohoi/acme-dns). For now though, I'll present to you the manual way to go about it that requires adding the TXT record yourself:

`sudo certbot run -a manual -d "*.foo.bar" -i apache`

You may want to consider appending `-d "foo.bar"` to the end of the command if you want to also certify the apex domain name (`foo.bar`). This will result in needing to create two TXT records in your DNS (with both being `_acme-challenge.foo.bar`, but with different values).

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**Author:** ![JuergenAuer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/letsencrypt/user_avatar/community.letsencrypt.org/juergenauer/32/26491_2.png) [@JuergenAuer](https://community.letsencrypt.org/u/JuergenAuer)\
**Post date:** [October 6, 2020, 2:54pm UTC](https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/certbot-requesting-support-installing-wildcard-certs-on-apache-ubuntu/135380/3 "2020-10-06T14:54:09Z")

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Hi @olspookishmagus

> [@olspookishmagus](#):
>
> My domain is:  
> `*.foo.bar`

please read the FAQ:

> **[FAQ - Let's Encrypt](https://letsencrypt.org/docs/faq/)**
>
> This FAQ is divided into the following sections:
> General Questions Technical Questions General Questions What services does Let’s Encrypt offer? Let’s Encrypt is a global Certificate Authority (CA). We let people and organizations...

If you want to create a wildcard certificate, dns validation is required. So you can't use `--apache`, that supports only http validation.

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**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/letsencrypt/original/3X/c/a/ca6c06ea1ea201324bba7048c6841ce60236468d.png) [@system](https://community.letsencrypt.org/u/system)\
**Post date:** [November 5, 2020, 2:54pm UTC](https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/certbot-requesting-support-installing-wildcard-certs-on-apache-ubuntu/135380/4 "2020-11-05T14:54:13Z")

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Closed on November 5, 2020, 2:54pm UTC

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