Issue using certbot with nginx

Question

I'm actually working on a webapp, I use Reactjs for the frontend and Golang for the backend. Those 2 programs are hosted separately on 2 VMs on Google-Compute-Engine. I want to serve my app through https so I choose to use Nginx for serving the frontend in production. Firstly I made my config file for Nginx:

#version: nginx/1.14.0 (ubuntu)
server {
     listen 80 default_server;
     listen [::]:80 default_server;

     root /var/www/banshee;
     server_name XX.XXX.XX.XXX; #public IP of my frontend VM

     index index.html;

     location / {
       try_files $uri /index.html =404;
     }
   }

For this part everything works as expected but after that I want to serve my App over https following this tutorial. I installed the packages software-properties-common,python-certbot-apache and certbot but when I tried

sudo cerbot --nginx certonly

I get the following message:

gdes@frontend:/etc/nginx$ sudo certbot --nginx certonly
Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log
Could not choose appropriate plugin: The requested nginx plugin does not appear to be installed
The requested nginx plugin does not appear to be installed

I made some searches on Google and here and I still can't figure out which plugin is missing or an other way to fix this.

Does someone have an idea tohelp me ?

Thanks a lot :)

score 174 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 15 '23 at 16:07

174

I was trying to create Let's Encrypt certificate using certbot for my sub-domain and had the following issue. Command:

ubuntu@localhost:~$ certbot --nginx -d my_subdomain.website.com -d my_subdomain2.website.com

Issue:

The requested Nginx plugin does not appear to be installed

Solution:

Ubuntu 20+

ubuntu@localhost:~$ sudo apt-get install python3-certbot-nginx

Earlier Versions

ubuntu@localhost:~$ sudo apt-get install python-certbot-nginx

edited Jan 15 '23 at 16:07

Deepanshu Suman

13
1
3

answered May 30 '19 at 11:45

Viraj Wadate

5,447
1
31
29

25

In Ubuntu 20.04 the package name is `python3-certbot-nginx` – Eduard Luca Nov 01 '20 at 21:43
1

You you installed via pip, you can alternatively do `pip install certbot-nginx` – Charles L. Dec 21 '20 at 21:45
The solution for Ubuntu 20+ worked on Ubuntu 18 as well. – margenn Jun 19 '21 at 14:15

score 21 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 28 '20 at 10:38

21

You will need to replace

apt install python-certbot-nginx

by

apt install python3-certbot-nginx

answered Oct 28 '20 at 10:38

Jozott

2,367
2
14
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score 8 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 09 '18 at 12:59

8

You can install the Certbot nginx plugin with the following commands:

add-apt-repository ppa:certbot/certbot
apt update
apt install python-certbot-nginx

answered Nov 09 '18 at 12:59

RoseHosting

366
2
6

Thanks, it's working, but the installation keeps failing when I do `sudo certbot --nginx certonly` I think it's because my app doesn't have any DNS – G.D Nov 12 '18 at 09:30
2

Yes, the domain name needs to resolve to the server running certbot in order to verify that you own the domain. – RoseHosting Nov 12 '18 at 21:32

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 11 '22 at 09:44

2

You have to re-install a python3 version of Lets Encrypt's certbot.

Run

sudo apt-get install python3-certbot-nginx

answered Sep 11 '22 at 09:44

4teen

31
3

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 24 '21 at 16:04

On Debian 10, certbot returns a "could not find a usable nginx binary" issue because, "/usr/sbin" is missing from the PATH. Add /usr/sbin to the PATH

export PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH

Then certbot can make a certificate for nginx

certbot --nginx -d <server name> --post-hook "/usr/sbin/service nginx restart"

As explained on the debian wiki page for letsencrypt.

Issue using certbot with nginx

5 Answers5