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:
libevents.abqlibrary.org
I ran this command:
certbot certonly --webroot --webroot-path /springshare/www --cert-name libevents.abqlibrary.org -d libevents.abqlibrary.org
It produced this output:
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Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log
Requesting a certificate for libevents.abqlibrary.org
Certbot failed to authenticate some domains (authenticator: webroot). The Certificate Authority reported these problems:
Identifier: libevents.abqlibrary.org
Type: dns
Detail: During secondary validation: DNS problem: query timed out looking up A for libevents.abqlibrary.org; DNS problem: query timed out looking up AAAA for libevents.abqlibrary.org
Hint: The Certificate Authority failed to download the temporary challenge files created by Certbot. Ensure that the listed identifiers serve their content from the provided --webroot-path/-w and that files created there can be downloaded 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.
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My web server is (include version):
nginx/1.28.2
The operating system my web server runs on is (include version):
Ubuntu24
My hosting provider, if applicable, is:
self-hosted
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 5.4.0
We are having no issues getting certificates for other domains, but there are three different variants of abqlibrary.org that are all failing DNS validation. The one listed, plus libanswers.abqlibrary.org and the base abqlibrary.org are all failing.
Using Let's Debug I see that not only is A and AAAA lookup failing, but the LE servers cannot get the CAA or SOA records from the nameserver.
Ive used various online tools to check the DNS config for libevents.abqlibrary.org as well as the base domain abqlibrary.org, and I dont see any glaring errors.
Using "--dry-run" gave the same results.
My best guess - the LE servers that are making the DNS check are unable to reach the domain nameservers, either due to misconfiguration or an intentional firewall block. I should also point out that we have many other cert requests (for other domains) that are all functioning properly, and that we have been issuing certs in this way for many years.