Challenges fail for domains dummy-host and dummy-host2.example.com

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#1

I am always able to renew. But what can I do to fix these errors?

My domain is: gibhenry.com
I ran this command: sudo certbot
It produced this output:

ā€¦
(E)xpand/(C)ancel: E
Renewing an existing certificate
Performing the following challenges:
http-01 challenge for dummy-host.example.com
http-01 challenge for dummy-host2.example.com
http-01 challenge for gibhenry.com
http-01 challenge for www.dummy-host.example.com
http-01 challenge for www.gibhenry.com
Waiting for verification...
Challenge failed for domain dummy-host.example.com
Challenge failed for domain dummy-host2.example.com
Challenge failed for domain www.dummy-host.example.com
http-01 challenge for dummy-host.example.com
http-01 challenge for dummy-host2.example.com
http-01 challenge for www.dummy-host.example.com
Cleaning up challenges
Some challenges have failed.

IMPORTANT NOTES:
 - The following errors were reported by the server:

   Domain: dummy-host.example.com
   Type:   dns
   Detail: DNS problem: NXDOMAIN looking up A for
   dummy-host.example.com - check that a DNS record exists for this
   domain

   Domain: dummy-host2.example.com
   Type:   dns
   Detail: DNS problem: NXDOMAIN looking up A for
   dummy-host2.example.com - check that a DNS record exists for this
   domain

   Domain: www.dummy-host.example.com
   Type:   dns
   Detail: DNS problem: NXDOMAIN looking up A for
   www.dummy-host.example.com - check that a DNS record exists for
   this domain

My web server is (include version): Apache 2.4

The operating system my web server runs on is (include version): MacOS 10.15.7

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): 1.3.0

Thanks in advance for any insight!

#2

Hi @gibhenry

please read your error.

You don't control example.com, so you can't create a certificate with that domain name.

1 Like
#3

That's clear, thanks. Why does certbot ask to perform those challenges? More to the point, how can I get it to stop doing that?

#4

Your configuration is buggy. There are vHosts with these domain names and you choose Expand.

Wrong command -> wrong result.

#5

Thank you, Juergen!//Gib