Simple Ubuntu Apache Install - Certbot Balks

Help
1

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: issues2.kroitor.ca

I ran this command: certbot install

It produced this output: Certbot doesn't know how to automatically configure the web server on this system.

My web server is (include version): apache2 2.4.52 (Ubuntu)

The operating system my web server runs on is (include version): Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS

My hosting provider, if applicable, is: Digital Ocean

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): 1.21.0

Disclaimer: longtime user of certbot, but memory fails and I may be making dumb omissions.

I just installed a basic LAMP stack running MantisBT on a new Ubuntu VM. It's a replacement for an existing VM that was running MantisBT on Rocky 9.3. All got reinstalled and came up properly except for certbot and the mod_ssl stuff.

Believing this would all be fairly simple, I followed this instruction page: https://kifarunix.com/install-mantis-bug-tracker-on-ubuntu-20-04/ which, although old, worked fine. Notice it has the world's simplest instructions for the site setup: all it does is create a single sites-available conf. (Edit: it also disables the default site and enables the new one using a2ensite)

As I believe that one difference between Fedora-style and Debian-style environments is in the apache config files, I chose to simply do what the page says (which works for getting http up) and then use certbot to add the https additions (which fails).

Questions:

  • does certbot create a log hinting at why it doesn't know how to automatically configure the web server?
  • am I right that certbot can change a simple http site to one with mod_ssl enabled?
  • is there a troubleshooting guide for what things make certbot lose the tune?

I do -- or at least long ago did -- know how to configure a secure site manually on Ubuntu (although I'm much more fluent with the CentOS / Rocky dialect), but I'd really rather not. Instead, I'd rather understand why certbot's automatic configuration is failing so that things like auto-renewal just work in a "set and forget" fashion.

2

Duh... it says (in line 1!) where the log is.

2024-06-23 00:44:17,700:DEBUG:certbot._internal.main:certbot version: 1.21.0
2024-06-23 00:44:17,700:DEBUG:certbot._internal.main:Location of certbot entry point: /usr/bin/certbot
2024-06-23 00:44:17,700:DEBUG:certbot._internal.main:Arguments:
2024-06-23 00:44:17,701:DEBUG:certbot._internal.main:Discovered plugins: PluginsRegistry(PluginEntryPoint#manual,PluginEntryPoint#null,PluginEntryPoint#standalone,PluginEntryPoint#webroot)
2024-06-23 00:44:17,712:DEBUG:certbot._internal.log:Root logging level set at 30
2024-06-23 00:44:17,713:DEBUG:certbot._internal.plugins.selection:Requested authenticator None and installer None
2024-06-23 00:44:17,714:DEBUG:certbot._internal.plugins.selection:No candidate plugin
2024-06-23 00:44:17,714:DEBUG:certbot._internal.plugins.selection:Selected authenticator None and installer None

Doesn't really help much though.

certbot --apache results in "appears not to be installed", but I can't see where / how to install it.

3

That means Certbot can't find an active Apache VirtualHost for that domain name. With the --apache plugin it wants to use that to satisfy the HTTP Challenge and as a template to setup the new VirtualHost for HTTPS (port 443).

Possibly (probably) because you only have one defined in sites-available. There should be a symlink in sites-enabled to that. Often setup by using a2ensite command (Apache enable site)

You can view your active VirtualHosts with this

sudo apache2ctl -t -D DUMP_VHOSTS

Or, possibly httpd instead of apache2ctl on your distro

2 Likes
4

Thanks for the quick reply.

Your answer highlighted the first issue: the site name in the conf file (and thus the name of the conf file and the symlink) all were set to something different than the actual site I was navigating to (and was set in the DNS). This is now fixed.

But I still get the same error.

issues2.conf in sites-available:

 <VirtualHost *:80>
     DocumentRoot "/var/www/html/mantisbt"
 
     ServerName issues2.kroitor.ca
 
     ErrorLog "/var/log/apache2/mantisbt_error_log"
     CustomLog "/var/log/apache2/mantisbt_access_log" combined
 
         <Directory "/var/www/html/mantisbt/">
             DirectoryIndex index.php
             Options -Indexes +FollowSymLinks
             AllowOverride All
             Require all granted
         </Directory>
 
 </VirtualHost>

issues2.conf symlink exists in sites-enabled (created using a2ensite)

What else needs to exist?

PS: there is a "less-than slash VirtualHost greater-than" line at the end of that block text but some quirk of the HTML keeps removing it. I can't even type that string here in the PS. It just gets removed.

1 Like
5

PPS: should mention that the original instructions (linked above) do include disabling the default site and enabling my new one (using a2dissite / a2ensite), which I had done. Only I used the site mantisbt.kroitor.ca and later absent-mindedly changed my plan to issues2.kroitor.ca.

6

Further questions:

  • why does it say the apache plugin is not installed?
  • Ubuntu installed certbot 1.21.0, but the documentation refers to 2.x. Should I be installing a newer version of certbot?
7

Actually the solution is simple: the apache plugin was indeed not install and has a misleading name. Running

apt install python3-certbot-apache

fixes the issue. I had done a couple of searches for required packages, but along the lines of certbot*.

8

Actually, the Certbot snap install is recommended for Ubuntu (and most other distros).

Please see:

and follow the instructions carefully

3 Likes
9

Yes, items in html like tags get formatted or dropped by the forum formatting.

To preserve such tags use the "preformatted text" option in the post menu. Or, just include 3 backticks before and after the block. I adjusted the VirtualHost code in your earlier post.

Can do like
```
VirtualHost statements
```

2 Likes
10

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.