Certbot too many certificates already issued for exact set of domains

[Acatalin]

My domain is: zulip.rodi.es

I ran this command: certbot renew

It produced this output:

Cert is due for renewal, auto-renewing…
Plugins selected: Authenticator webroot, Installer None
Renewing an existing certificate
Attempting to renew cert (zulip.rodi.es) from /etc/letsencrypt/renewal/zulip.rodi.es.conf produced an unexpected error: urn:ietf:params:acme:error:rateLimited :: There were too many requests of a given type :: Error creating new order :: too many certificates already issued for exact set of domains: zulip.rodi.es: see https://letsencrypt.org/docs/rate-limits/. Skipping.

My web server is (include version): nginx 1.10.3

The operating system my web server runs on is (include version): debian 9 stretch

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 0.28.0

I need to renew the certificate because it expired but when I run the renew command I get this error.
I know for sure that the problem is not with the number of requests because I only requested 2 certificates. I don’t know where the problem is and it’s driving me insane, thank you.

[JuergenAuer]

Hi @Acatalin

@Acatalin

I know for sure that the problem is not with the number of requests because I only requested 2 certificates.

that's wrong - https://check-your-website.server-daten.de/?q=zulip.rodi.es#ct-logs

Issuer	not before	not after	Domain names	LE-Duplicate	next LE
Let's Encrypt Authority X3	2019-12-24	2020-03-23	zulip.rodi.es - 1 entries	duplicate nr. 5	next Letsencrypt certificate: 2019-12-31 07:55:41
Let's Encrypt Authority X3	2019-12-24	2020-03-23	zulip.rodi.es - 1 entries	duplicate nr. 4
Let's Encrypt Authority X3	2019-12-24	2020-03-23	zulip.rodi.es - 1 entries	duplicate nr. 3
Let's Encrypt Authority X3	2019-12-24	2020-03-23	zulip.rodi.es - 1 entries	duplicate nr. 2
Let's Encrypt Authority X3	2019-12-24	2020-03-23	zulip.rodi.es - 1 entries	duplicate nr. 1

Five identical certificates. Where are these? Use one.

[Acatalin]

You are right, my fault.

The issue I’m having is that I can’t find the certificates, I think I’ve deleted them.

Is there any way to retrieve them or should I wait to get a new one?

[danb35]

@Acatalin

I think I’ve deleted them.

Why would you do that? But in any event, the rate limit you hit restricts you to five identical certificates per week. Since these were all issued on 24 Dec, you'll be able to issue a new identical cert tomorrow. If you need to test your configuration between now and then to make sure you're issuing and using the certs properly, use the testing environment--that's what it's for.

[Acatalin]

Thank you @JuergenAuer and @danb35 for your help, it works now and I got the hang of it, I’m gonna make better use of this certificates in the future, thanks once again.