If anyone’s reading this you may have noticed the URL is wp.boba.org. Possibly you entered www.wp.boba.org to get here and saw it change to wp.boba.org. Whatever. Until this evening (15 Jan, 2020) the URL’s protocol would have been http://. https:// wouldn’t have even connected. Now, even if http:// is entered it changes to https://. Hooray!!
The SSL certificate for this website is now part of the alanboba.net certificate. But, until tonight, I was unable to expand the domains in the alanboba.net certificate to include wp.boba.org and www.wp.boba.org.
My attempts to expand the alanboba.net certificate began nearly a month ago. Everything I tried failed. In desperation I posted on the LetsEncrypt community forum a little over three weeks ago, Apache certificate modification not successful, hoping someone would quickly recognize the problem and suggest a solution.
That didn’t pan out. Not a lot of respondents. The fix suggested didn’t address the issue the error message presented, the request was “unauthorized”, or suggest if the message might be misleading.
Domain: wp.boba.org
Type: unauthorized
Detail: Invalid response from http://wp.boba.org/.well-known/acme-challenge/QVV-1Skk-Xvrr6QAL-IvvDZuMGnhr2mNOfoAWbkYCnw [67.86.147.116]: "\n\n404 Not Found\n\n
More reading. More checking settings on this server. Some experimental configuration changes to see if the issue resolved and the command certbot –expand… would succeed in adding two additional domains to the existing certificate. None of the changes worked.
Finally came across a different command and decided to try it. As I understood it, it is meant to renew existing certificates not add domains to them. However it does include a “webroot” parameter and some of the documents I’d read suggested the webroot location might not be correctly interpreted by the command I was using.
The documentation I found doesn’t say anything to suggest the command can be used to expand the domain names covered by a certificate. I just had an inspiration and decided that if webroot might be the problem then explicitly specifying the webroot and adding domain names at the same time might turn the trick.
Tonight I tired the command with the webroot parameter and my additional domains appended to the list of domains already on the certificate. Surprise and delight! The domains were added to the certificate AND the protocol is now changed to https:// even if http:// is used in the URL name!
The following command…
sudo certbot run -a webroot -i apache -w /var/www/wp.boba.org/public_html -d alanboba.net,boba.org,sclc.boba.org,train.boba.org,training.boba.org,www.alanboba.net,www.boba.org,wp.boba.org,www.wp.boba.org
Produced the output below. Plus it added my two additional domains to the existing certificate and modified apache’s config for the website so http:// requests are rewritten as https://. Like I said at the beginning, hooray!!
Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log
Plugins selected: Authenticator webroot, Installer apache
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You have an existing certificate that contains a portion of the domains you requested (ref: /etc/letsencrypt/renewal/alanboba.net.conf)
It contains these names: alanboba.net, boba.org, sclc.boba.org, train.boba.org, training.boba.org, www.alanboba.net, www.boba.org
You requested these names for the new certificate: alanboba.net, boba.org, sclc.boba.org, train.boba.org, training.boba.org, www.alanboba.net, www.boba.org, wp.boba.org, www.wp.boba.org.
Do you want to expand and replace this existing certificate with the new certificate?
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(E)xpand/(C)ancel: E
Renewing an existing certificate
Performing the following challenges:
http-01 challenge for wp.boba.org
http-01 challenge for www.wp.boba.org
Using the webroot path /var/www/wp.boba.org/public_html for all unmatched domains.
Waiting for verification...
Cleaning up challenges
Deploying Certificate to VirtualHost /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/boba.org-le-ssl.conf
Deploying Certificate to VirtualHost /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/boba.org-le-ssl.conf
Deploying Certificate to VirtualHost /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/sclc.boba.org-le-ssl.conf
Deploying Certificate to VirtualHost /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/train.boba.org-le-ssl.conf
Deploying Certificate to VirtualHost /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/train.boba.org-le-ssl.conf
Deploying Certificate to VirtualHost /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/boba.org-le-ssl.conf
Deploying Certificate to VirtualHost /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/boba.org-le-ssl.conf
Created an SSL vhost at /etc/apache2/sites-available/wp.boba.org-le-ssl.conf
Deploying Certificate to VirtualHost /etc/apache2/sites-available/wp.boba.org-le-ssl.conf
Enabling available site: /etc/apache2/sites-available/wp.boba.org-le-ssl.conf
Deploying Certificate to VirtualHost /etc/apache2/sites-available/wp.boba.org-le-ssl.conf
Please choose whether or not to redirect HTTP traffic to HTTPS, removing HTTP access.
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1: No redirect - Make no further changes to the webserver configuration. 2: Redirect - Make all requests redirect to secure HTTPS access. Choose this for new sites, or if you're confident your site works on HTTPS.
You can undo this change by editing your web server's configuration.
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Select the appropriate number [1-2] then [enter] (press 'c' to cancel): 2
Enhancement redirect was already set.
Enhancement redirect was already set.
Enhancement redirect was already set.
Enhancement redirect was already set.
Enhancement redirect was already set.
Enhancement redirect was already set.
Enhancement redirect was already set.
Redirecting vhost in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/wp.boba.org.conf to ssl vhost in /etc/apache2/sites-available/wp.boba.org-le-ssl.conf
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Your existing certificate has been successfully renewed, and the new certificate has been installed.
The new certificate covers the following domains: https://alanboba.net,https://boba.org, https://sclc.boba.org, https://train.boba.org,https://training.boba.org, https://www.alanboba.net, https://www.boba.org,https://wp.boba.org, and https://www.wp.boba.org