Error installing Let's Encrypt on nginx server

Question

I am trying to install a Let's Encrypt SSL certificate across four sites: mysite.com es.mysite.com fr.mysite.com de.mysite.com

I ran the following command: certbot --nginx -d mysite.com -d www.mysite.com which worked fine for mysite.com, es.mysite.com, fr.mysite.com. When I ran the sudo certbot --nginx -d de.mysite.com is got the following error:

IMPORTANT NOTES:
 - The following errors were reported by the server:

   Domain: de.mysite.com
   Type:   unauthorized
   Detail: Invalid response from
   https://de.mysite.com/.well-known/acme-challenge/te29XBKAQdQBbQxvzPTgfgaFpzM_OUj6b4gSuiuPvOI
   [MY IP ADDRESS]: "\r\n\r\n<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD XHTML
   1.0 Transitional//EN\"
   \"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd\">\r\n<"

   To fix these errors, please make sure that your domain name was
   entered correctly and the DNS A/AAAA record(s) for that domain
   contain(s) the right IP address.

I then tried to install the certificate manually using the following code: certbot certonly --manual -d de.mysite.com . I was then asked Are you ok with your IP being loggged? I selected Y and hit enter. Then I followed this step:

Create a file containing just this data:

SJpIiQET8X0vehhTjmcPBrm3zsbS1p8f9Mf2oKE5l5w.SkXszSMjtmN2-3gN7kkDhgSElerR3H1MgUc9N8z70n4

And make it available on your web server at this URL:

http://de.mysite.com/.well-known/acme-challenge/SJpIiQET8X0vehhTjmcPBrm3zsbS1p8f9Mf2oKE5l5w

I pressed Enter to Continue and then got the same error:

IMPORTANT NOTES:
 - The following errors were reported by the server:

   Domain: de.mysite.com
   Type:   unauthorized
   Detail: Invalid response from
   https://de.mysite.com/.well-known/acme-challenge/SJpIiQET8X0vehhTjmcPBrm3zsbS1p8f9Mf2oKE5l5w
   [MY IP ADDRESS]: "\r\n\r\n<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD XHTML
   1.0 Transitional//EN\"
   \"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd\">\r\n<"

   To fix these errors, please make sure that your domain name was
   entered correctly and the DNS A/AAAA record(s) for that domain
   contain(s) the right IP address.

Can anyone advise how to resolve this error and successfully install the Let's Encrypt SSL certificate?

Thanks.

First of all you should try to visit from a browser that link of the acme challenge in the second block (http://de.mysite.com/.well-known/acme-challenge/SJpIiQET8X0vehhTjmcPBrm3zsbS1p8f9Mf2oKE5l5w) and see if the content is EXACTLY the data requested. It looks like it is being transformed to HTML, which makes the verification fail. I recommend using curl for that purpose so you can see the exact response without any formatting. — Marc Sances, May 01 '19 at 10:06

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered May 15 '19 at 09:48

I managed to resolve my issue. I had to include the following in my nginx config first:

   location ~ /.well-known {
      allow all;
   }

   location ^~ /.well-known/acme-challenge/ {
      default_type "text/plain";
      root         /data/wordpress/mysite/;
   }

   location = /.well-known/acme-challenge/ {
      return 404;
   }

Then I had to install the Let's Encrypt SSL certificate manually by running certbot certonly --manual -d de.mysite.com and followed the steps to successfully install the certificate.

Error installing Let's Encrypt on nginx server

1 Answers1