Certbot won’t renew certificate

Posted on March 24, 2018 in Web Dev

Certbot wouldn’t renew the cert for my domain.

I decided to venture into the certbot config files (/etc/letsencrypt/ by default) and remove the renewal file so that I could reinstall the cert from scratch:

rm /etc/letsencrypt/www.joetannorella.com.conf

However, when trying to reinstall a cert again (certbot renew), I was getting this:

renewal config file {} is missing a required file reference

Renewal configuration file /etc/letsencrypt/renewal/www.joetannorella.com.conf is broken. Skipping.

The mistake I made was not removing all traces of my domain from letscrypt. What you need to do is remove all references to your domain in these locations:

  • /etc/letsencrypt/live/[yourdomain]
  • /etc/letsencrypt/renewal/[yourdomain]
  • /etc/letsencrypt/archive/[yourdomain]

Once you’ve done this, you should be able to install a cert again from scratch.

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