Fails to install Python 2.7 packages on letsencrypt renew on AWS instance

[Bilal]

Hello,

Renewing my certificate doesn’t work anymore and I get exit status 1,
I am on Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS, a Lightsail instance on amazon aws.
The certificate renewal 3 times before, I did install awscli recently which I hope is not causing the issue?

I ran this command: /tmp/letsencrypt/letsencrypt-auto certonly --renew-by-default --webroot --webroot-path <path_to_htdocs_here> -d <domain_name> (I tried with --no-self-upgrade --no-bootstrap too but no help). I just hid the domain name, but if it adds help in tracking the issue then I can include it (I apologize for this in advance)

It produced this output:

My web server is (include version): Running a NodeJS application on AWS Lightsail

The operating system my web server runs on is (include version): Ubuntu 16.04

My hosting provider, if applicable, is: AWS

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):

The version of my client is (e.g. output of certbot --version or certbot-auto --version if you’re using Certbot):

[rg305]

I see that you are calling:
/tmp/letsencrypt/letsencrypt-auto

I would try calling it from the same folder:
first
cd /tmp/letsencrypt
then
…

It also shows a lot of packages that are no longer needed.
I would run:
sudo apt-get autoremove
or
sudo apt autoremove
[or both]

[Bilal]

Tried both of the above with the error still there. I saw autoremove removed Python 3 and a number aws related along with others which I hope would have fixed the issue but it didn’t. I tried the option 1 in your response too, but the error remains. I did install awscli few days ago for backups on buckets, other than that I didn’t make any other installation until the last successful renewal I did a couple of months ago. Exactly the same command worked before but not working anymore

[rg305]

hmm…

I would:

• backup the LE folder
• remove cerbot/letsencrypt # if installed
• remove certbot-auto/letencrypt-auto
• re-install certbot or certbot-auto # pick only one

[the LE folder should remain in tact throughout - but backups are always good precautions]

[_az]

@Bilal

I did install awscli recently which I hope is not causing the issue?

If you installed awscli via pip (or anything else, really), it might have done something to your system Python installation.

letsencrypt-auto should work fine on Ubuntu Xenial, so something has gone wrong.

One thing you might try is installing Certbot from the Ubuntu PPA rather than using letencrypt-auto.

[Bilal]

@rg305 I was in the middle of doing the steps you recommended and saw the link proposed by @_az. Looked straight and easy to use so I tried it and guess what it worked perfectly without any issue. Thanks a lot @_az, your help was just 5 minute work. The link for Certbot installation from Ubuntu PPA worked perfectly. You have saved my life at least twice on this forum. Hats off to you sir