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: crenergycoaching.org
I ran this command: sudo certbot --nginx
It produced this output:
Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log
Which names would you like to activate HTTPS for?
We recommend selecting either all domains, or all domains in a VirtualHost/server block.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
1: crenergycoaching.org
2: www.crenergycoaching.org
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Select the appropriate numbers separated by commas and/or spaces, or leave input
blank to select all options shown (Enter 'c' to cancel):
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
You have an existing certificate that contains a portion of the domains you
requested (ref: /etc/letsencrypt/renewal/crenergycoaching.org.conf)
It contains these names: crenergycoaching.org
You requested these names for the new certificate: crenergycoaching.org,
www.crenergycoaching.org.
Do you want to expand and replace this existing certificate with the new
certificate?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
(E)xpand/(C)ancel: e
Renewing an existing certificate for crenergycoaching.org and www.crenergycoaching.org
Certbot failed to authenticate some domains (authenticator: nginx). The Certificate Authority reported these problems:
Identifier: www.crenergycoaching.org
Type: connection
Detail: 178.156.224.38: Fetching http://www.crenergycoaching.org/.well-known/acme-challenge/Kpul3scyH69ygjs2B6FslejLxj-sBGdX0qqmeDRZtYE: Timeout during connect (likely firewall problem)
Hint: The Certificate Authority failed to verify the temporary nginx configuration changes made by Certbot. Ensure the listed domains point to this nginx server and that it is accessible from the internet.
Some challenges have failed.
Ask for help or search for solutions at https://community.letsencrypt.org. See the logfile /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log or re-run Certbot with -v for more details.
My web server is (include version): NGINX 1.28.1
The operating system my web server runs on is (include version): Ubuntu 24.04.4
My hosting provider, if applicable, is: Hetzner Cloud
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): 5.3.1
I'm trying to configure NGINX to recognize requests for www.crenergycoaching.org and redirect them to https://crenergycoaching.org. It seems to be working when I test in various browsers (including in incognito mode) but when I test from remote locations (using for example https://geopeeker.com) I can't get www.crenergycoaching.org to work.
Figured this might be an SSL issue with the www.crenergycoaching.org name so I tried running Certbot to add a certificate for that domain (I already have one on the server for crenergycoaching.org). But Certbot keeps failing, as if there's a firewall blocking it. I triple checked my firewall and both port 80 and 443 are wide open.
I checked the letsencrypt log but not seeing any thing there or maybe I'm just not reading it correctly. Why is Certbot failing to obtain a cert for www.crenergycoaching.org?
Here's the end of the log file:
2026-03-02 16:58:31,691:DEBUG:certbot._internal.error_handler:Encountered exception:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/snap/certbot/5370/lib/python3.12/site-packages/certbot/_internal/auth_handler.py", line 104, in handle_authorizations
self._poll_authorizations(authzrs, max_retries, max_time_mins, best_effort)
File "/snap/certbot/5370/lib/python3.12/site-packages/certbot/_internal/auth_handler.py", line 208, in _poll_authorizations
raise errors.AuthorizationError('Some challenges have failed.')
certbot.errors.AuthorizationError: Some challenges have failed.
2026-03-02 16:58:31,691:DEBUG:certbot._internal.error_handler:Calling registered functions
2026-03-02 16:58:31,691:INFO:certbot._internal.auth_handler:Cleaning up challenges
2026-03-02 16:58:32,784:DEBUG:certbot._internal.log:Exiting abnormally:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/snap/certbot/5370/bin/certbot", line 7, in <module>
sys.exit(main())
^^^^^^
File "/snap/certbot/5370/lib/python3.12/site-packages/certbot/main.py", line 18, in main
return internal_main.main(cli_args)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "/snap/certbot/5370/lib/python3.12/site-packages/certbot/_internal/main.py", line 1886, in main
return config.func(config, plugins)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "/snap/certbot/5370/lib/python3.12/site-packages/certbot/_internal/main.py", line 1446, in run
new_lineage = _get_and_save_cert(le_client, config, sans,
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "/snap/certbot/5370/lib/python3.12/site-packages/certbot/_internal/main.py", line 131, in _get_and_save_cert
renewal.renew_cert(config, sans, le_client, lineage)
File "/snap/certbot/5370/lib/python3.12/site-packages/certbot/_internal/renewal.py", line 565, in renew_cert
new_cert, new_chain, new_key, _ = le_client.obtain_certificate(sans, new_key)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "/snap/certbot/5370/lib/python3.12/site-packages/certbot/_internal/client.py", line 434, in obtain_certificate
orderr = self._get_order_and_authorizations(csr.data, self.config.allow_subset_of_names)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "/snap/certbot/5370/lib/python3.12/site-packages/certbot/_internal/client.py", line 512, in _get_order_and_authorizations
authzr = self.auth_handler.handle_authorizations(orderr, self.config, best_effort)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "/snap/certbot/5370/lib/python3.12/site-packages/certbot/_internal/auth_handler.py", line 104, in handle_authorizations
self._poll_authorizations(authzrs, max_retries, max_time_mins, best_effort)
File "/snap/certbot/5370/lib/python3.12/site-packages/certbot/_internal/auth_handler.py", line 208, in _poll_authorizations
raise errors.AuthorizationError('Some challenges have failed.')
certbot.errors.AuthorizationError: Some challenges have failed.
2026-03-02 16:58:32,786:ERROR:certbot._internal.log:Some challenges have failed.
FYI here's what I added to the NGINX config. file before trying obtain the cert--I simply added a new server block for www.crenergycoaching.org after the block that was inserted by certbot when I originally got the cert for crenergycoaching.org:
server {
if ($host = crenergycoaching.org) {
return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
} # managed by Certbot
listen 80 ;
listen [::]:80 ;
server_name crenergycoaching.org;
return 404; # managed by Certbot
}
server {
server_name www.crenergycoaching.org;
return 301 https://crenergycoaching.org$request_uri;
}
Thanks for any clues you can provide.
