Question

Letsencrypt DNS problem looking up A

I successfully installed an SSL certificate for one of my domains the other day using your tutorial. Today I tried to general an SSL certificate for a second domain, and I’m getting the error “DNS problem: NXDOMAIN looking up A for [the domain]”. Now the detail says to make sure the DNS A record contains the right IP address. I checked, it does.

Next it suggests to make sure no firewalls are preventing the server from communicating. How could that be a problem when I’ve done this before with no problem? I have not installed any firewalls or anything else for that matter since then.

Could this DNS problem have anything to do with the massive DDoS attack that’s occurring today? Suggestions appreciated.

Show comments
Submit an answer

This textbox defaults to using Markdown to format your answer.

You can type !ref in this text area to quickly search our full set of tutorials, documentation & marketplace offerings and insert the link!

Sign In or Sign Up to Answer

These answers are provided by our Community. If you find them useful, show some love by clicking the heart. If you run into issues leave a comment, or add your own answer to help others.

jenniferchalek • October 24, 2016

OK guys, I finally found the answer. Even though the error thrown was complaining about the A record, that wasn’t what was causing it (the A record was fine). The reason it was failing was because I didn’t set up CNAME records for the domain. Took forever to figure this out, thought I’d post the answer in case someone else runs into this problem.

Ayezele Mboto • April 11, 2019

I had this same problem. Took me a heck of while to figure it out. My problem was that no CNAME record was set. Simply add www to HOSTNAME and make it an alias of root using @. Worked for me.

jenniferchalek • October 21, 2016

I didn’t think so but I was grasping at straws. Any other ideas why I might be having this problem? I’m not finding any difference in what worked before and what isn’t working now. EDIT: Oh wait - do you think the certificate authority letsencrypt uses might be affected then?