How to update email for notifications

[despinosa]

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:vibriefing.news

I ran this command:
certbot update_account -m websupport@virtualintelligencebriefing.com

It produced this output:

usage:
certbot [SUBCOMMAND] [options] [-d DOMAIN] [-d DOMAIN] ...

Certbot can obtain and install HTTPS/TLS/SSL certificates. By default,
it will attempt to use a webserver both for obtaining and installing the
certificate.
certbot: error: unrecognized arguments: update_account
root@vibriefing:~# certbot update_account -m websupport+1@virtualintelligencebriefing.com
usage:
certbot [SUBCOMMAND] [options] [-d DOMAIN] [-d DOMAIN] ...

Certbot can obtain and install HTTPS/TLS/SSL certificates. By default,
it will attempt to use a webserver both for obtaining and installing the
certificate.
certbot: error: unrecognized arguments: update_account

My web server is (include version):
Apache

The operating system my web server runs on is (include version):
Ubuntu 18.04.06

My hosting provider, if applicable, is:
GCP

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):
N/A

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

certbot 0.27.0

I nee to update the email to receive the email notification alert when the certificate will expire. Thank you.

[petercooperjr]

@despinosa

certbot 0.27.0

The update_account command was added in certbot 0.30.

Looking at the release notes from then, there might be a register --update-registration command that could do what you want in the meantime, but I'm not personally familiar with it.

@despinosa

Ubuntu 18.04.06

And that's getting old and probably not getting updates. You should upgrade to a newer in-support OS (which probably includes a newer version of certbot). If you're not up for that just yet, you might also look into updating only certbot by uninstalling the version in the package manager, and then installing a newer version via snap or via pip. But just be aware that even if you're getting a certificate, there's a lot more to actually being "secure" and part of that is ensuring that your system is getting security patches.

@despinosa

I nee to update the email to receive the email notification alert when the certificate will expire. Thank you.

The email on the account is actually much more important for getting notifications if Let's Encrypt has some other issue with your certificate. The expiration emails are just a last-ditch effort to remind you to check on your other automation; you shouldn't have a process relying on them.

[Osiris]

@despinosa

certbot 0.27.0

Haven't seen a Certbot this old...

[catharsis]

if you use the APT package instead of the snap:

Ubuntu 18 LTS = certbot 0.23.0-1 (initial) / 0.27.0-1~ubuntu18.04.2 (updated)
Ubuntu 20 LTS = certbot 0.40.0-1 (initial) / 0.40.0-1ubuntu0.1 (updated)
Ubuntu 22 LTS = certbot 1.21.0-1build1

All versions (even going back to 16 LTS) should be able to use the certbot snap which is currently on version 2.6 (with a 2.7 dev build available)

Ubuntu LTS versions normally only update packages if there are security vulnerabilities, or less commonly, for stability. And if there is an update needed, they might just patch the old version instead of switching to a newer version. (As far as I can tell certbot has not had any published security vulnerabilities ever?)

If you want up-to-date software on an LTS, that's what snaps are for, if one exists, and in this case it does.

If you're highly averse to snaps, Ubuntu 22 LTS has certbot 1.21 which still works okay for now. I'm not using the snap on my 22 LTS servers (for now) but I am on my 20 LTS servers.

[Osiris]

@catharsis

If you're highly averse to snaps, Ubuntu 22 LTS has certbot 1.21 which still works okay for now. I'm not using the snap on my 22 LTS servers (for now) but I am on my 20 LTS servers.

Alternatively you could install Certbot using pip (in a venv!, see https://certbot.eff.org/ and choose "Pip" as the OS). That has its drawbacks too (manually updating the packages et cetera), but at least you could run the most recent Certbot without snap.