[SOLVED] Can't renew cert on a self-hosted lemmy instance D:
from sol6_vi@lemmy.world to selfhosted@lemmy.world on 21 Jan 04:53
https://lemmy.world/post/24523007

EDIT: Thanks everyone for your time and responses. To break as little as possible attempting to fix this I’ve opted to go with ZeroSSL’s DNS process to acquire a new cert. I wish I could use this process for all of my certs as it was very quick and easy. Now I just have to figure out the error message lemmy is throwing about not being able to run scripts.

Thank you all for your time sincerely. I understand a lot more than I did last night.

Original Post

As the title says I’m unable to renew a cert on a self-hosted lemmy instance. A friend of mine just passed away and he had his hands all up in this and had it working like magic. I’m not an idiot and have done a ton of the legwork to get our server running and working - but lemmy specifically required a bit of fadanglin’ to get working correctly. Unfortunately he’s not here to ask for help, so I’m turning to you guys. I haven’t had a problem with any of my other software such as nextcloud or pixelfed but for some reason lemmy just refuses to cooperate. I’m using acme.sh to renew the cert because that’s what my buddy was using when he had set this all up. I’m running apache2 on a bare metal ubuntu server.

Here’s my httpd-ssl.conf:

pastebin.com/YehfTPNV

Here’s some recent output from my acme.sh/acme.log:

pastebin.com/PESVVNg4

Here’s the terminal read out and what I’m attempting to execute:

pastebin.com/jfHfiaE0

If you can make any suggestions at all on what I might be missing or what may be configured incorrectly I’d greatly appreciate a nudge in the right direction as I’m ripping my hair out.

Thank you kindly for your time.

#selfhosted

threaded - newest

just_another_person@lemmy.world on 21 Jan 05:02 next collapse

What’s in the acme.log file in the last line there?

sol6_vi@lemmy.world on 21 Jan 05:11 collapse

Are you referring to the ‘does not contain DNS’? Or the ‘apache,/’ because both are a bit confusing to me honestly

just_another_person@lemmy.world on 21 Jan 10:18 collapse

‘cat /root/.acme.sh/acme.log’

ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com on 21 Jan 05:04 next collapse

Why use Apache over Nginx?

sol6_vi@lemmy.world on 21 Jan 05:13 collapse

My friend chose it, he was old school. I don’t personally have a preference between the two but we use this server for our small business so I haven’t really wanted to risk messing everything up to switch when it’s (mostly) currently functional.

roofuskit@lemmy.world on 21 Jan 16:53 collapse

Woah, you have a Lemmy instance hosted on the server for your small business? That just doesn’t sit well with me. I hope the server going down would not halt your income.

sol6_vi@lemmy.world on 21 Jan 19:33 collapse

We are a community oriented business and I really hate the big tech companies controlling the fate of my company. Lemmy seemed like one of a few easy alternative platforms where we were free from being stuck under the thumb of a tech giant or a ban away from loosing our members.

ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com on 21 Jan 05:04 next collapse

Are you using cloud flare?

sol6_vi@lemmy.world on 21 Jan 05:14 collapse

I am not.

limer@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 21 Jan 05:49 next collapse

Hi, just a guess. But

The retryafter=86400 value is too large (> 600), will not retry anymore.

Seems to me like the call to your server in the verification step is failing.

Do you have port 80 blocked or stopping the call in another way ?

mhzawadi@lemmy.horwood.cloud on 21 Jan 06:48 next collapse

Would concur, that was the only thing I could find.

sol6_vi@lemmy.world on 21 Jan 12:34 collapse

The only thing I can think of that might be interfering is HSTS? I’m not sure how acme is accessed when a browser can only access a site with ssl. Perhaps HSTS is interfering with the cert process somehow?

limer@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 21 Jan 15:21 collapse

The process makes file to read via http (not https), it’s just a nonce ( some random characters). Once their server reads that file, using the domain (and not the ip) and compares with what is expected, this shows you own the domain , and they give you a new ssl cert, modifying your server’s https configuration file (usually). And deletes the file it made .

sol6_vi@lemmy.world on 21 Jan 15:46 collapse

Thanks for the breakdown.

running_ragged@lemmy.world on 21 Jan 05:51 next collapse

Not sure if this is anything or not.

You pasted the httpd-ssl.conf file.

The script output is referencing httpd.conf

I think it’s sending the challenge request via port 80 and that might be where you’re looking in the wrong place.

sol6_vi@lemmy.world on 21 Jan 12:29 collapse

Thanks I’m gonna check this out first thing. I thought that was weird but I’m not sure what in httpd.conf could be interfering with the process. I will give the file a better read through and see what I can come up with - it’s a good starting point.

iopq@lemmy.world on 21 Jan 08:22 next collapse

You can just try zeroSSL. Either add a DNS record they give you or host the file they give you, it’s much simpler

sol6_vi@lemmy.world on 21 Jan 12:31 collapse

This sounds like a good backup plan and I’ll probably definitely have to resort to trying it - thank you for the suggestion.

verstra@programming.dev on 21 Jan 09:37 next collapse

You’ve just reminded me to fix cert renewal on my instance. I’m using let’s encrypt & their certbot with nginx and it is great.

Recently my nginx config got too complex, so nginx plugin stopped working correctly, because it wasn’t able to inject the config for ACME challenge correctly anymore. The solution was to manually configure location /.well-known/acme-challange to read from a local directory and configure certbot to use a local webroot directory instead of fiddling with nginx config.

sol6_vi@lemmy.world on 21 Jan 12:33 collapse

This is out of my skillset but I’m sure there’s documentation online I can check out to give it a shot. We use this server for our (very) small business so I’m trying not to jack anything up worse than it is but it seems like something I could potentially tackle. Thank you.

sol6_vi@lemmy.world on 21 Jan 11:42 next collapse

Just popping in this morning to thank everyone for their suggestions overnight. I have some stuff to look at now when I get to the office this morning. Can’t respond to every comment at the moment but I will. Just wanted to say thanks.

_cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 21 Jan 17:58 next collapse

Are you using cloudflare to proxy the server? If so, just download a 10-year certificate and don’t worry about renewing short term ones.

sol6_vi@lemmy.world on 21 Jan 19:32 collapse

Unfortunately no, though that sounds very nice.

_cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 21 Jan 20:23 collapse

Ah, you should perhaps look into using Cloudflare or a similar service. Not for the certificate, but because if somebody took a dislike to your instance, they could easily DDoS you off the internet. The decade long certificate is just icing on the top.

sol6_vi@lemmy.world on 22 Jan 01:00 collapse

Certainly will look into it thanks for the heads up!

johannes@lemmy.jhjacobs.nl on 22 Jan 05:53 collapse

I’m really surprised noone mentioned Caddy which handles all the SSL business for you. Not to mention an easier config :)