Unable to renew certificate: Updating challenge

My domain is: for defrance.co.uk and I use vanadium.cloudhosting

I got an email which states

Automatic Let's Encrypt renewal for defrance.co.uk was attempted and failed.
This certificate expires on 2021-05-17 00:19:42 +0100 BST.

Unable to renew certificate: Updating challenge for defrance.co.uk: acme: challenge update timeout

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Hi @Paulw

please explain: That's not a Letsencrypt mail, that's something else.

Why didn't you answer all of the questions?

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Because I don’t know the answers, the marketing guy left and I am left to pick up the pieces. I’m an IT guy and I know nothing about these things.

I received an email from cpanel (vanadium.cloudhosting.co.uk) about the letsencrypt certificate not being able to renew, I just discovered that mail.defrance.co.uk was the problem so I just issued a new certificate but unticked mail.defrance.co.uk and it issued just fine although it only renewed for 3 months, is that normal ? and can I configure it so it always ignores mail.defrance.co.uk so the auto renewal won’t have any problems in future

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This isn't the only problem.

That subdomain has a different ip address, so http validation via cPanel normally doesn't work. And that ip doesn't answer.

Final: Your MX record of your main domain doesn't use that subdomain. So that subdomain

  • has expired dns endtries
  • isn't used

Conclusion: No certificate is required with that domain name.

PS:

Then you have to know all these things.

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Juergen,

Wow thanks for digging into that for me, just to confirm which domain name needs no certificate, www.defrance.co.uk or mail.defranceco.uk ?

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Yes, the certificates are valid for 90 days and must be renewed. It's suggested that you attempt to renew them at 60 days - in case of any unforeseen problem. Then you'll have time to correct any problems before the current cert expires.

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