Certbot without snapd

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1

I had a terrible time updating Debian 9 to Debian 10. The system would enter in emergency mode while booting giving very little information about what was going on. Eventually I removed "snapd" and was able to boot the system.

I didn't like the idea of having snapd on a server and this cemented my subjective opinion about it.

In order to have certbot again I did the following:

cd <some dir>
python3 -m venv certbot
source certbot/bin/activate
pip3 install --upgrade pip
pip3 install certbot-apache

And then just use:

<some dir>/bin/pip3 install --quiet --upgrade pip certbot-apache
<some dir>/bin/certbot renew

To renew my certs.

Question: is this a secure and stable way of having certbot installed? - I know it's not the recommended way. - Are there any downsides?

2

The Certbot team will soon be publishing instructions on how to install Certbot using pip, which will be supported on a "best effort" basis for those who cannot use snaps for whatever reason. You can follow along the progress here.

3

It's very nice to have these instructions. Thank you.

4

The instructions are online! For example: Apache + pip.