Re: Your certificate (or certificates) for the names listed below will expire in 17 days (on 20 Sep 22 01:23 +0000)

[rg305]

That same result is expected, as the path is explicit.
I would have liked to have seen what it looked like when the dry-run test was failing.

It seems you are back on track, now that you have recreated that directory with these permissions:

@lingber

root www-data

[lingber]

Thanks to you (and MikeMcQ) for help.

I'll only be sure everything is OK circa 1 Oct 2022 when I can try to actually renew.

Lester

[lingber]

I assume that .well-known/ will automatically populate with expected info when I run 'certbot renew' on 1-2 Oct 2022?

[rg305]

Yes, it should.
[and depopulate immediately thereafter]