Trouble with Auto Renew SSL Cert and Certbot

I am trying to get a certbot auto renew of an existing SSL certificate to work and I keep getting errors:

Challenge failed for domain audiopress-staging.bitpress.com.

My domain is: audiopress-staging.bitpress.com

I ran this command:
certbot renew --no-self-upgrade

It produced this output:
Attempting to renew cert (audiopress-staging.bitpress.com) from /etc/letsencrypt/renewal/audiopress-staging.bitpress.com.conf produced an unexpected error: Some challenges have failed.. Ski
All renewal attempts failed. The following certs could not be renewed:
/etc/letsencrypt/live/audiopress-staging.bitpress.com/fullchain.pem (failure)

My web server is (include version):
Apache

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

My hosting provider, if applicable, is:
hostpapa

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):
certbot 1.6.0

2 Likes

Welcome to the Let's Encrypt Community, Russ :slightly_smiling_face:

We're happy to help you solve your renewal woes. Please post the full output from certbot with the errors if you would so that we can perform a diagnosis. You can put three backticks (```) alone on the lines above and below the output to make the output easily readable.

2 Likes

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


Processing /etc/letsencrypt/renewal/audiopress-staging.bitpress.com.conf


Cert is due for renewal, auto-renewing...
Plugins selected: Authenticator apache, Installer apache
Renewing an existing certificate
Performing the following challenges:
http-01 challenge for audiopress-staging.bitpress.com
Waiting for verification...
Challenge failed for domain audiopress-staging.bitpress.com
http-01 challenge for audiopress-staging.bitpress.com
Cleaning up challenges
Attempting to renew cert (audiopress-staging.bitpress.com) from /etc/letsencrypt/renewal/audiopress-staging.bitpress.com.conf produced an unexpected error: Some challenges have failed.. Skipping.
All renewal attempts failed. The following certs could not be renewed:
/etc/letsencrypt/live/audiopress-staging.bitpress.com/fullchain.pem (failure)


All renewal attempts failed. The following certs could not be renewed:
/etc/letsencrypt/live/audiopress-staging.bitpress.com/fullchain.pem (failure)


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

IMPORTANT NOTES:

2 Likes

Please find the /.well-known/acme-challenge/ directory inside your webroot directory and create a file there named test containing "OK".

1 Like

Not 100% certain if that directory is created, used, then removed or not...
If so, then it might not be there now.

2 Likes

We will find out. It usually remains in my experience.

And based on the 404, the apache plugin may have created it "elsewhere".
I would also look for its possible remaining existence with:
grep -REi 'well-known|acme-challenge' /etc/apache2

1 Like

You make a good point. That's one of my checkpoints in the process.

1 Like

[root@audiopress-staging www]# grep -REi 'well-known|acme-challenge' /etc/apache2
grep: /etc/apache2: No such file or directory

1 Like

Hmm... :thinking:

What says sudo apachectl -S?

1 Like

AH00558: httpd: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using audiopress-staging.bitpress.com. Set the 'ServerName' directive globally to suppress this message
VirtualHost configuration:
*:80 audiopress-staging.bitpress.com (/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf:43)
*:443 is a NameVirtualHost
default server audiopress-staging.bitpress.com (/etc/httpd/conf.d/ssl.conf:56)
port 443 namevhost audiopress-staging.bitpress.com (/etc/httpd/conf.d/ssl.conf:56)
port 443 namevhost audiopress-staging.bitpress.com (/etc/httpd/conf/httpd-le-ssl.conf:2)
alias audiopress-staging.bitpress.com
ServerRoot: "/etc/httpd"
Main DocumentRoot: "/var/www/html"
Main ErrorLog: "/etc/httpd/logs/error_log"
Mutex mpm-accept: using_defaults
Mutex cache-socache: using_defaults
Mutex authdigest-opaque: using_defaults
Mutex watchdog-callback: using_defaults
Mutex proxy-balancer-shm: using_defaults
Mutex rewrite-map: using_defaults
Mutex ssl-stapling-refresh: using_defaults
Mutex authdigest-client: using_defaults
Mutex lua-ivm-shm: using_defaults
Mutex ssl-stapling: using_defaults
Mutex proxy: using_defaults
Mutex authn-socache: using_defaults
Mutex ssl-cache: using_defaults
Mutex default: dir="/run/httpd/" mechanism=default
PidFile: "/run/httpd/httpd.pid"
Define: DUMP_VHOSTS
Define: DUMP_RUN_CFG
User: name="apache" id=48
Group: name="apache" id=48

1 Like

Please create a file named test containing "OK" in /etc/httpd/.well-known/acme-challenge/.

1 Like

I see a problem:
[have I mentioned how Apache is notorious at looking the other way to such obvious overlaps?]

Two files with the same servername that is being requested:

Furthermore the second file has both a ServerName and an ServerAlias of the SAME name.
[that's a first!]

1 Like

ok, i created the test file. what next?

We need to fit the ServerName overlap.
Please show both files:

2 Likes
[quote="russmoffat, post:11, topic:135603"]
/etc/httpd/conf.d/
[/quote]

#
# When we also provide SSL we have to listen to the
# the HTTPS port in addition.
#
Listen 443 https

##
##  SSL Global Context
##
##  All SSL configuration in this context applies both to
##  the main server and all SSL-enabled virtual hosts.
##

#   Pass Phrase Dialog:
#   Configure the pass phrase gathering process.
#   The filtering dialog program (`builtin' is a internal
#   terminal dialog) has to provide the pass phrase on stdout.
SSLPassPhraseDialog exec:/usr/libexec/httpd-ssl-pass-dialog

#   Inter-Process Session Cache:
#   Configure the SSL Session Cache: First the mechanism
#   to use and second the expiring timeout (in seconds).
SSLSessionCache         shmcb:/run/httpd/sslcache(512000)
SSLSessionCacheTimeout  300

#   Pseudo Random Number Generator (PRNG):
#   Configure one or more sources to seed the PRNG of the
#   SSL library. The seed data should be of good random quality.
#   WARNING! On some platforms /dev/random blocks if not enough entropy
#   is available. This means you then cannot use the /dev/random device
#   because it would lead to very long connection times (as long as
#   it requires to make more entropy available). But usually those
#   platforms additionally provide a /dev/urandom device which doesn't
#   block. So, if available, use this one instead. Read the mod_ssl User
#   Manual for more details.
SSLRandomSeed startup file:/dev/urandom  256
SSLRandomSeed connect builtin
#SSLRandomSeed startup file:/dev/random  512
#SSLRandomSeed connect file:/dev/random  512
#SSLRandomSeed connect file:/dev/urandom 512

#
# Use "SSLCryptoDevice" to enable any supported hardware
# accelerators. Use "openssl engine -v" to list supported
# engine names.  NOTE: If you enable an accelerator and the
# server does not start, consult the error logs and ensure
# your accelerator is functioning properly.
#
SSLCryptoDevice builtin
#SSLCryptoDevice ubsec

##
## SSL Virtual Host Context
##

<VirtualHost _default_:443>

# General setup for the virtual host, inherited from global configuration
#DocumentRoot "/var/www/html"
#ServerName www.example.com:443

# Use separate log files for the SSL virtual host; note that LogLevel
# is not inherited from httpd.conf.
ErrorLog logs/ssl_error_log
TransferLog logs/ssl_access_log
LogLevel warn

#   SSL Engine Switch:
#   Enable/Disable SSL for this virtual host.
SSLEngine on

#   SSL Protocol support:
# List the enable protocol levels with which clients will be able to
# connect.  Disable SSLv2 access by default:
#SSLProtocol all -SSLv3
SSLProtocol -SSLv2 -SSLv3 -TLSv1 -TLSv1.1 +TLSv1.2

#   SSL Cipher Suite:
#   List the ciphers that the client is permitted to negotiate.
#   See the mod_ssl documentation for a complete list.
#SSLCipherSuite HIGH:MEDIUM:!aNULL:!MD5:!SEED:!IDEA
SSLCipherSuite          ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256                                                                                                             -GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384
SSLHonorCipherOrder     on

#   Speed-optimized SSL Cipher configuration:
#   If speed is your main concern (on busy HTTPS servers e.g.),
#   you might want to force clients to specific, performance
#   optimized ciphers. In this case, prepend those ciphers
#   to the SSLCipherSuite list, and enable SSLHonorCipherOrder.
#   Caveat: by giving precedence to RC4-SHA and AES128-SHA
#   (as in the example below), most connections will no longer
#   have perfect forward secrecy - if the server's key is
#   compromised, captures of past or future traffic must be
#   considered compromised, too.
#SSLCipherSuite RC4-SHA:AES128-SHA:HIGH:MEDIUM:!aNULL:!MD5
#SSLHonorCipherOrder on

#   Server Certificate:
# Point SSLCertificateFile at a PEM encoded certificate.  If
# the certificate is encrypted, then you will be prompted for a
# pass phrase.  Note that a kill -HUP will prompt again.  A new
# certificate can be generated using the genkey(1) command.
#SSLCertificateFile /etc/pki/tls/certs/localhost.crt
SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/audiopress-staging.bitpress.com/fullchain.pem

#   Server Private Key:
#   If the key is not combined with the certificate, use this
#   directive to point at the key file.  Keep in mind that if
#   you've both a RSA and a DSA private key you can configure
#   both in parallel (to also allow the use of DSA ciphers, etc.)
#SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/pki/tls/private/localhost.key
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/audiopress-staging.bitpress.com/privkey.pem

#   Server Certificate Chain:
#   Point SSLCertificateChainFile at a file containing the
#   concatenation of PEM encoded CA certificates which form the
#   certificate chain for the server certificate. Alternatively
#   the referenced file can be the same as SSLCertificateFile
#   when the CA certificates are directly appended to the server
#   certificate for convinience.
#SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/pki/tls/certs/server-chain.crt

#   Certificate Authority (CA):
#   Set the CA certificate verification path where to find CA
#   certificates for client authentication or alternatively one
#   huge file containing all of them (file must be PEM encoded)
#SSLCACertificateFile /etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt

#   Client Authentication (Type):
#   Client certificate verification type and depth.  Types are
#   none, optional, require and optional_no_ca.  Depth is a
#   number which specifies how deeply to verify the certificate
#   issuer chain before deciding the certificate is not valid.
#SSLVerifyClient require
#SSLVerifyDepth  10

#   Access Control:
#   With SSLRequire you can do per-directory access control based
#   on arbitrary complex boolean expressions containing server
#   variable checks and other lookup directives.  The syntax is a
#   mixture between C and Perl.  See the mod_ssl documentation
#   for more details.
#<Location />
#SSLRequire (    %{SSL_CIPHER} !~ m/^(EXP|NULL)/ \
#            and %{SSL_CLIENT_S_DN_O} eq "Snake Oil, Ltd." \
#            and %{SSL_CLIENT_S_DN_OU} in {"Staff", "CA", "Dev"} \
#            and %{TIME_WDAY} >= 1 and %{TIME_WDAY} <= 5 \
#            and %{TIME_HOUR} >= 8 and %{TIME_HOUR} <= 20       ) \
#           or %{REMOTE_ADDR} =~ m/^192\.76\.162\.[0-9]+$/
#</Location>

#   SSL Engine Options:
#   Set various options for the SSL engine.
#   o FakeBasicAuth:
#     Translate the client X.509 into a Basic Authorisation.  This means that
#     the standard Auth/DBMAuth methods can be used for access control.  The
#     user name is the `one line' version of the client's X.509 certificate.
#     Note that no password is obtained from the user. Every entry in the user
#     file needs this password: `xxj31ZMTZzkVA'.
#   o ExportCertData:
#     This exports two additional environment variables: SSL_CLIENT_CERT and
#     SSL_SERVER_CERT. These contain the PEM-encoded certificates of the
#     server (always existing) and the client (only existing when client
#     authentication is used). This can be used to import the certificates
#     into CGI scripts.
#   o StdEnvVars:
#     This exports the standard SSL/TLS related `SSL_*' environment variables.
#     Per default this exportation is switched off for performance reasons,
#     because the extraction step is an expensive operation and is usually
#     useless for serving static content. So one usually enables the
#     exportation for CGI and SSI requests only.
#   o StrictRequire:
#     This denies access when "SSLRequireSSL" or "SSLRequire" applied even
#     under a "Satisfy any" situation, i.e. when it applies access is denied
#     and no other module can change it.
#   o OptRenegotiate:
#     This enables optimized SSL connection renegotiation handling when SSL
#     directives are used in per-directory context.
#SSLOptions +FakeBasicAuth +ExportCertData +StrictRequire
<Files ~ "\.(cgi|shtml|phtml|php3?)$">
    SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
</Files>
<Directory "/var/www/cgi-bin">
    SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
</Directory>

#   SSL Protocol Adjustments:
#   The safe and default but still SSL/TLS standard compliant shutdown
#   approach is that mod_ssl sends the close notify alert but doesn't wait for
#   the close notify alert from client. When you need a different shutdown
#   approach you can use one of the following variables:
#   o ssl-unclean-shutdown:
#     This forces an unclean shutdown when the connection is closed, i.e. no
#     SSL close notify alert is send or allowed to received.  This violates
#     the SSL/TLS standard but is needed for some brain-dead browsers. Use
#     this when you receive I/O errors because of the standard approach where
#     mod_ssl sends the close notify alert.
#   o ssl-accurate-shutdown:
#     This forces an accurate shutdown when the connection is closed, i.e. a
#     SSL close notify alert is send and mod_ssl waits for the close notify
#     alert of the client. This is 100% SSL/TLS standard compliant, but in
#     practice often causes hanging connections with brain-dead browsers. Use
#     this only for browsers where you know that their SSL implementation
#     works correctly.
#   Notice: Most problems of broken clients are also related to the HTTP
#   keep-alive facility, so you usually additionally want to disable
#   keep-alive for those clients, too. Use variable "nokeepalive" for this.
#   Similarly, one has to force some clients to use HTTP/1.0 to workaround
#   their broken HTTP/1.1 implementation. Use variables "downgrade-1.0" and
#   "force-response-1.0" for this.
BrowserMatch "MSIE [2-5]" \
         nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown \
         downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0

#   Per-Server Logging:
#   The home of a custom SSL log file. Use this when you want a
#   compact non-error SSL logfile on a virtual host basis.
CustomLog logs/ssl_request_log \
          "%t %h %{SSL_PROTOCOL}x %{SSL_CIPHER}x \"%r\" %b"

</VirtualHost>
1 Like

Not found. I think if @rg305 can get your configuration straightened out, we should be able to move forward.

1 Like

Can you edit your post and put three backticks on the lines above and below the outputs to make them readable.

1 Like
[quote="russmoffat, post:11, topic:135603"]
httpd-le-ssl.conf
[/quote]

<IfModule mod_ssl.c>
<VirtualHost *:443>
  DocumentRoot "/var/www/html"
  ServerName "audiopress-staging.bitpress.com"
  ServerAlias "audiopress-staging.bitpress.com"
Include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-apache.conf
SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/audiopress-staging.bitpress.com/fullchain.pem
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/audiopress-staging.bitpress.com/privkey.pem
</VirtualHost>
</IfModule>

I bet /.well-known/acme-challenge/ is in here:
/var/www/html

Can you move the test file there?

1 Like