I fixed this issue by using --manual-auth-hook and --manual-cleanup-hook.
I have written two scripts - one is for the HTTP authentication - it copies the HTTP validation file on to remote host apache root server dir. and completes the authentication. Another one cleanup the files that created part of authentication.
I installed certbot on the local server and mentioned the remote hostname and server root directory. Here is the command I ran to do the HTTP validation remotely.
./certbot-auto certonly --server https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory --manual --email email@myemail.com --manual-public-ip-logging-ok --agree-tos --renew-by-default --preferred-challenges=http --manual-auth-hook _authentication-script-path_ --manual-cleanup-hook _cleanup-script-path_ -d domainname
Thanks for the responses.
–
Rajesh