What's the difference between these two cerbot command

[mhweb]

I’m trying to move website with ssl to a new server, and I’ll be moving the certs to the new server, and I would like to know what’s the difference between these two commands and which is best option?

certbot --apache --preferred-challenges=dns

certbot --manual --preferred-challenges dns certonly \

[Osiris]

• The first uses the apache plugin for authentication as wel as installation of the certificate
• The second uses the manual plugin for authentication
• The second uses certonly, which means it will not try to install the certificate, even if you’d specified a plugin which could install the certificate for you, such as the apache plugin from the first line
• The second command isn’t finished yet, as the \ tells your command line interpreter to continue the command on the next line

You can read more about the different plugins in the certbot User Guide.

[mnordhoff]

I believe the first command will return an error, because the apache plugin doesn’t support DNS validation.

(You can use one of the DNS plugins as the “authenticator” and the apache plugin as the “installer”, though.)

[Osiris]

@mnordhoff

I believe the first command will return an error, because the apache plugin doesn’t support DNS validation.

Good catch, I didn't actually "integrate" all the options

@mnordhoff

You can use one of the DNS plugins as the “authenticator” and the apache plugin as the “installer”, though.

By using the options -a and -i, respectively.