The manual plugin is not working; there may be problems with your existing configuration

Help
1

My domain is:

prove.redball.rocks

I ran this command:

certbot renew

It produced this output:

Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Processing /etc/letsencrypt/renewal/prove.redball.rocks.conf

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Cert is due for renewal, auto-renewing...

Could not choose appropriate plugin: The manual plugin is not working; there may be problems with your existing configuration.

The error was: PluginError('An authentication script must be provided with --manual-auth-hook when using the manual plugin non-interactively.',)

Attempting to renew cert (prove.redball.rocks) from /etc/letsencrypt/renewal/prove.redball.rocks.conf produced an unexpected error: The manual plugin is not working; there may be problems with your existing configuration.

The error was: PluginError('An authentication script must be provided with --manual-auth-hook when using the manual plugin non-interactively.',). Skipping.

All renewal attempts failed. The following certs could not be renewed:

/etc/letsencrypt/live/prove.redball.rocks/fullchain.pem (failure)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

All renewal attempts failed. The following certs could not be renewed:

/etc/letsencrypt/live/prove.redball.rocks/fullchain.pem (failure)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

1 renew failure(s), 0 parse failure(s)

My web server is (include version):

root@ip-172-31-20-158:/home/ubuntu# nginx -v
nginx version: nginx/1.14.0 (Ubuntu)

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

root@ip-172-31-20-158:/home/ubuntu# uname -a
Linux ip-172-31-20-158 4.15.0-1063-aws #67-Ubuntu SMP Mon Mar 2 07:24:29 UTC 2020 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

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):

NO

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

root@ip-172-31-20-158:/home/ubuntu# certbot --version
certbot 0.31.0
2

Question: Is it enough to have nginx running and port 80 open for this to work? (do I even need to have nginx running?)

3

If you want to use your nginx running on port 80 your config is wrong, use this command:

certbot renew --nginx --preferred-challenges=http
4

I don't really care how it works, I just need it to work somehow.

The best would be without nginx, just with port 80 open.

I ran your command with port 80 open and nginx running but it didn't work:

root@ip-172-31-20-158:/home/ubuntu# certbot renew --nginx --preferred-challenge http
Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Processing /etc/letsencrypt/renewal/prove.redball.rocks.conf
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Cert is due for renewal, auto-renewing...
Could not choose appropriate plugin: The requested nginx plugin does not appear to be installed
Attempting to renew cert (prove.redball.rocks) from /etc/letsencrypt/renewal/prove.redball.rocks.conf produced an unexpected error: The requested nginx plugin does not appear to be installed. Skipping.
All renewal attempts failed. The following certs could not be renewed:
  /etc/letsencrypt/live/prove.redball.rocks/fullchain.pem (failure)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

All renewal attempts failed. The following certs could not be renewed:
  /etc/letsencrypt/live/prove.redball.rocks/fullchain.pem (failure)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
1 renew failure(s), 0 parse failure(s)
5

These are choices only you can make. If your port 80 is free, you can use --standalone instead of --nginx

6

That worked. I sense you are very great genius.