{webroot} does not exist or is not a directory

Help
#1

I am trying to use certbot image for my deployment and this is the related part of docker-compose.yaml:

certbot:
container_name: certbot
image: certbot/certbot:v1.9.0
logging:
  driver: "json-file"
  options:
    max-size: 500m
volumes:
  - {vm_path}/certbot/certbot-etc:/etc/letsencrypt
  - {vm_path}/certbot/certbot-var:/var/lib/letsencrypt
  - {vm_path}/nginx/certbot-web-root:/var/www/certbot/html
  - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
  - /etc/timezone:/etc/timezone:ro
command:
  - certonly
  - --webroot
  - -w /var/www/certbot/html
  - --email={email}
  - --agree-tos
  - --no-eff-email
  - --dry-run
  - -d {domain}

It produced this output:
certbot | /var/www/certbot/html does not exist or is not a directory
certbot exited with code 1

docker-compose version:
1.27.4

The operating system my web server runs on is (include version):
ubuntu 18

I can login to a root shell on my machine : yes

I'm also sure that {vm_path}/nginx/certbot-web-root exists, and the path is also absolute.

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#2

Welcome to the Let's Encrypt Community :slightly_smiling_face:

The webroot is the folder (directory) where the content of your website exists.

For example: /var/www/html

If you create a file named test containing "OK" in your webroot, you should be able to go to http://www.domain.com/test and see "OK".

Please see @_az's response below for a more detailed analysis before trying anything.

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#3

It's weird that you'd get that error, because the Docker runtime will actually create the volume's source directory if it doesn't already exist.

That makes me think it's maybe permission-related? But if Docker runs as root as it usually does, that shouldn't happen either. SELinux maybe?

You could try sanity-check yourself with something like (remembering to replace {vm_path}):

docker run --rm -it -v {vm_path}/nginx/certbot-web-root:/var/www/certbot/html --entrypoint /bin/sh certbot/certbot:v1.9.0 -c 'ls -lah /var/www/certbot/html'
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#4

This is the output @_az :

total 8K     
drwxr-xr-x    2 1001     1001        4.0K Nov  4 07:24 .
drwxr-xr-x    3 root     root        4.0K Nov  4 10:18 ..
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#5

I've found the problem. In the command section I should have seprated -w and the path with \n not space!

@_az @griffin Thanks for your help.

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