Certbot says no such authorization when trying to authorize domain

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1

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. crt.sh | 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: notsparkable.org

I ran this command: sudo certbot --nginx

It produced this output:
Which names would you like to activate HTTPS for?
We recommend selecting either all domains, or all domains in a VirtualHost/server block.

1: notsparkable.org

Select the appropriate numbers separated by commas and/or spaces, or leave input
blank to select all options shown (Enter 'c' to cancel): 1
Requesting a certificate for notsparkable.org
An unexpected error occurred:
No such authorization

My web server is (include version): Nginx

The operating system my web server runs on is (include version): Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

My hosting provider, if applicable, is: Linode

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 5.1.0

1 Like
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Welcome @unsparkables

Was there any other information from Certbot?

Does this problem repeat? Because there is an obscure "404 bug" due to a timing issue on Let's Encrypt. But, this is very rare. If it occurs repeatedly it is not this.

We'd need to see the log to better assess. Upload a log from a failed run in the /var/log/letsencrypt directory. You probably need to rename the log file to a .txt for upload.

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Hi, @MikeMcQ

Here's the log file:
letsencrypt.log.txt (15.0 KB)

1 Like
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Thanks. Let's try a test with the Let's Encrypt staging system. Please show result of:

sudo certbot certonly --dry-run --nginx -d notsparkable.org
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letsencrypt.log.txt (34.0 KB)

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Good:

2025-11-05 15:15:10,937:DEBUG:certbot._internal.display.obj:Notifying user: The dry run was successful.

Let's try production again (to rule out the rare 404 bug). Show result of:

sudo certbot --nginx -d notsparkable.org
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root@localhost:~# sudo certbot --nginx -d notsparkable.org
Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log
Requesting a certificate for notsparkable.org

Successfully received certificate.
Certificate is saved at: /etc/letsencrypt/live/notsparkable.org/fullchain.pem
Key is saved at: /etc/letsencrypt/live/notsparkable.org/privkey.pem
This certificate expires on 2026-02-03.
These files will be updated when the certificate renews.

Deploying certificate
Successfully deployed certificate for notsparkable.org to /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/webserver
Congratulations! You have successfully enabled HTTPS on https://notsparkable.org

NEXT STEPS:

  • The certificate will need to be renewed before it expires. Certbot can automatically renew the certificate in the background, but you may need to take steps to enable that functionality. See User Guide — Certbot 5.2.0.dev0 documentation for instructions.

If you like Certbot, please consider supporting our work by:

I think it's working now, thanks a lot.
letsencrypt.log.txt (36.3 KB)

2 Likes
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Yes, looks good. Might have been the 404 Bug. It is a rare timing issue between the Let's Encrypt databases. We saw one of these on this forum most recently in July.

If it happens during auto-renew it will automatically retry the next scheduled renew. Certbot default is to try twice a day so no worries.

4 Likes