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Certbot nginx plugin could not open file

Posted November 30, 2017 8.6k views
NginxLet's EncryptUbuntu 16.04

Hello,

I have a simple personal website yohannparis.com that I want to make HTTPS.

I setup my Nginx server block following this tutorial:
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-nginx-server-blocks-virtual-hosts-on-ubuntu-16-04

And I followed this tutorial to install Let’s Encrypt on my server block:
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-let-s-encrypt-with-nginx-server-blocks-on-ubuntu-16-04

Everything worked like a charm, up to Step 4 where the following command:

sudo certbot --nginx -d yohannparis.com -d www.yohannparis.com

return this:

Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log
Could not open file: /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/yohannparis.com
Plugins selected: Authenticator nginx, Installer nginx
Starting new HTTPS connection (1): acme-v01.api.letsencrypt.org
Obtaining a new certificate
Performing the following challenges:
tls-sni-01 challenge for yohannparis.com
tls-sni-01 challenge for www.yohannparis.com
Cleaning up challenges
Could not open file: /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/yohannparis.com
Cannot find a VirtualHost matching domain yohannparis.com. In order for Certbot to correctly perform the challenge please add a corresponding server_name directive to your nginx configuration: https://nginx.org/en/docs/http/server_names.html

I checked the permissions on my server block file in /etc/nginx/ but it all look good:

.
├── [drwxr-xr-x]  conf.d
[...]
├── [drwxr-xr-x]  sites-available
│   ├── [-rw-r--r--]  default
│   └── [-rw-r--r--]  yohannparis.com
├── [drwxr-xr-x]  sites-enabled
│   └── [lrwxrwxrwx]  yohannparis.com -> sites-available/yohannparis.com
[...]

I tried to access the log on /var/log/letsencrypt, but it wasn’t helpful:

2017-11-29 21:03:32,206:DEBUG:certbot.error_handler:Calling registered functions
2017-11-29 21:03:32,206:INFO:certbot.auth_handler:Cleaning up challenges
2017-11-29 21:03:32,478:WARNING:certbot_nginx.parser:Could not open file: /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/yohannparis.com
2017-11-29 21:03:33,529:DEBUG:certbot.log:Exiting abnormally:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/certbot", line 11, in <module>
    load_entry_point('certbot==0.19.0', 'console_scripts', 'certbot')()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/certbot/main.py", line 861, in main
    return config.func(config, plugins)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/certbot/main.py", line 698, in run
    certname, lineage)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/certbot/main.py", line 85, in _get_and_save_cert
    lineage = le_client.obtain_and_enroll_certificate(domains, certname)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/certbot/client.py", line 357, in obtain_and_enroll_certificate
    certr, chain, key, _ = self.obtain_certificate(domains)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/certbot/client.py", line 318, in obtain_certificate
    self.config.allow_subset_of_names)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/certbot/auth_handler.py", line 74, in get_authorizations
    resp = self._solve_challenges()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/certbot/auth_handler.py", line 115, in _solve_challenges
    resp = self.auth.perform(self.achalls)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/certbot_nginx/configurator.py", line 767, in perform
    sni_response = chall_doer.perform()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/certbot_nginx/tls_sni_01.py", line 55, in perform
    vhost = self.configurator.choose_vhost(achall.domain)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/certbot_nginx/configurator.py", line 242, in choose_vhost
    "https://nginx.org/en/docs/http/server_names.html") % (target_name))
MisconfigurationError: Cannot find a VirtualHost matching domain yohannparis.com. In order for Certbot to correctly perform the challenge please add a corresponding server_name directive to your nginx configuration: https://nginx.org/en/docs/http/server_names.html

I changed my server block file permissions to 777, but to no effect!

Where can I found a solution to this issue?

Thank you for your help.
Yohann Paris

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3 comments
  • kamaln7 November 30, 2017
    Reply Report

    Hi, can you please post the output of the following command? It tests the Nginx config and outputs the result—I’m suspecting that Certbot is able to open the file but not parse it properly.

    sudo nginx -t
  • Yohann November 30, 2017
    Reply Report

    I tried sudo nginx -t before, but everything is fine:

    nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful

    I also run sudo nginx -s reload to be sure.

    For information here is the content of my server bloc:

    server {
    listen 80;
        listen [::]:80 ipv6only=on;

        root /var/www/yohannparis.com/html;
        index index.html index.php;
    autoindex off;

        server_name *.yohannparis.com;

        location / {
                try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
        autoindex off;
        }

        location ~ /\.ht {
                deny all;
        }
}
  • kerryoco January 14, 2018
    Reply Report

    I’m currently stuck in the exact same place, any luck? Only difference for me was that I had it working some months ago, but never set auto-renew. Now on trying to refresh the certificate I am getting the exact same errors, and ‘sudo nginx -t’ reads the same. I don’t think anything changed in my configuration since then, so I’m scratching my head....

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1 answer
naderabbara February 22, 2018

Hey all,

I also had this problem but this ended up working for me:

It has to do with broken symlinks in /sites-enabled. A symlink may break for different reasons, in this case, nginx can still follow the link, but certbot cannot. Why? I don’t know tbh.

To fix, I simply removed the symlink and created a new one.

If you list the directory you can typically spot a broken symlink with red text and a black background, and a working symlink with blue text:

naderabbara@server:/etc/nginx/sites-enabled$ ls
brokensymlink    workingsymlink

I removed the broken symlink and created a new one: 

sudo rm <broken symlink>
sudo ln -s path/to/nginx/conf nginx-conf

Hope it’s this simple for you.

Reply Report
  • Yohann February 27, 2018

    Thanks for the report.
    Indeed, my symlink where red, and once I recreated them things started to work well.

    Unfortunately, now there is something not going well. Apparently a test done by certbot is not accepted by Let’s encrypt on version prior to 0.21.0.

    Even after updating apt-get I’m stuck in version 0.19.0, so I need to wait for the fixed version to be available on the packet manager.

    Reply Report
    • naderabbara March 13, 2018

      I also had this problem. You could uninstall certbot and reinstall it and it may work, or you can force upgrade packages individually by running apt list --upgradable and then apt-get install <package>. That didn’t work for me.

      Alternatively, you can run the apt-get distro-upgrade command, and this will upgrade every package that has an available upgrade. However you should be wary this might destabilize your setup. I didn’t have anything serious on my droplet and it was backed up, so I went ahead and did this and it worked well.

      Good luck!

      Reply Report
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