I have a number of websites run from my own web server, like this one. Something I set up to experiment with web technologies and gain some insight into how things work.
One of the things I did was setup HTTPS for the websites once I found about about EFF‘s LetsEncrypt service. I wanted to see if I could provide secure connections to my sites even if they’re only for browsing.
I was able to get HTTPS working for my sites and have the certificates renew automatically. Then I changed ISPs. With TWC, now Spectrum, there was never a problem with the automated renewals. With Optimum the renewals didn’t work.
Emails alerting me to certificate expiration were my first indication there was a problem.
The logs indicated that files on my server couldn’t be manipulated to confirm my control of the website. Plus, entering the website address as boba.org or http://boba.org no longer connected to the website (externally, on the local network it still worked). Connection to any of my hosted sites now required prefixing https:// to the name. Automatic translation from http to https no longer worked.
After talking, chatting online actually, with Optimum they told me yup, that’s just the way it works. “We block port 80 to protect you” and “you can’t unblock it”.
Panic! How to maintain my certificates so https continues working? Fortunately certbot offers a manual option that requires updating DNS TXT records. It’s slow and cumbersome and NOT suitable for long term maintenance of even one certificate containing one domain but it works.
Sixty days pass and the certificate expiration emails start again. This time I determined that I’d speak to a person at Optimum and not use the chat. After some time with my Optimum support tech, and after she escalated to a supervisor, I was told there is in fact a way to open port 80. And it is a setting available to me via my account login. So I opened port 80 and thought all set now, renewals will happen automatically.
Not so. I got more certificate expiration warning emails. What to do? All the automated renewal tests I tried indicated a problem with a plugin. I read the certbot documentation, did searches for the error and tried to find a solution that was applied to the problem I had. I didn’t find it. But I did get a clue from a post that said once a manual certification has been done that setting needs to be removed before automated renewal will work again.
After more digging I discovered the certificate config files in /etc/letsencrypt/renewal. In them were two variables that seemed likely to be related to the auto renew problem. They were authenticator = and pref_challs =. The settings were manual and dns-01 respectively.
I never touched these files. It turns out doing manual renewal with DNS TXT records using the command sudo certbot certonly --manual --preferred-challenges dns --cert-name <name> -d <name1>,<name2>,etc just changes the config files in the background. Attempting auto renew later doesn’t work because the settings in the config files have now been changed to authenticator = manual and pref_challs = dns-01.
There was no help I could find that explicitly listed the acceptable values for these variables. And I didn’t have copies of these files from before the changes. After digging around in the help for a while I decided it was likely they should be authenticator = apache and pref_challs = http-01.
I made the change for one certificate and tested auto renew. Eureka, it worked!!
Next I changed the config files for all the certificates and did a test to see if it worked.
$ sudo certbot renew --dry-run
** DRY RUN: simulating 'certbot renew' close to cert expiry
** (The test certificates below have not been saved.)
Congratulations, all renewals succeeded. The following certs have been renewed:
/etc/letsencrypt/live/alanboba.net/fullchain.pem (success)
/etc/letsencrypt/live/andrewboba.org/fullchain.pem (success)
/etc/letsencrypt/live/danielboba.org/fullchain.pem (success)
/etc/letsencrypt/live/kevinkellypouredfoundations.com/fullchain.pem (success)
/etc/letsencrypt/live/www.anhnguyen.org/fullchain.pem (success)
/etc/letsencrypt/live/www.conorboba.org/fullchain.pem (success)
/etc/letsencrypt/live/www.mainguyen.org/fullchain.pem (success)
** DRY RUN: simulating 'certbot renew' close to cert expiry
** (The test certificates above have not been saved.)
It worked. All my certificates will again auto renew.
This website was created after the problems began. So I didn’t even attempt to make it https. Now that I’ve figured out how to have my certs auto renew again I’ll be converting this site over to https too.