How to allow certbot to be able to access http://myapi.com/.well-known/acme-challenge/2d8dvxv8x9dvxd9v via nginx?

Question

My nginx.conf file is as follows:

user www-data;
worker_processes auto;
pid /run/nginx.pid;
include /etc/nginx/modules-enabled/*.conf; 
#the above include brings in the following default files:
#50-mod-http-image-filter.conf  
#50-mod-http-xslt-filter.conf  
#50-mod-mail.conf  
#50-mod-stream.conf

events {
        worker_connections 500;
}

http {
    include        /etc/nginx/proxy.conf;
    limit_req_zone $binary_remote_addr zone=one:10m rate=100r/m;
    server_tokens  off;

    sendfile on;
    keepalive_timeout   30;
    client_body_timeout 10; client_header_timeout 10; send_timeout 10;

    upstream myapp{
        server 127.0.0.1:5000;
    }

    server {
        listen 443 ssl http2;
        listen [::]:443 ssl http2;
        server_name myapi.com;
        ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/myapi.com/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
        ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/myapi.com/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot
        include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot
        ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem; # managed by Certbot

        add_header X-Frame-Options DENY;
        add_header X-Content-Type-Options nosniff;


        #Redirects all traffic
        location / {
            proxy_pass http://myapi;
            limit_req  zone=one burst=10;
        }
    }
}

I installed the certbot and certbot-nginx (ubuntu).

SSL is working fine. Firewall only allows port 443.

I am trying to renew the certbot certificate with command: sudo certbot renew --dry-run

This tries to verify that I own the domain by making a request to http://myapi.com/.well-known/acme-challenge/2d8dvxv8x9dvxd9v (note: I have obfuscated the key value 2d8dvxv8x9dvxd9v as this is something private)

But this time's out. So I have enabled port 80 and added the following additional server item:

   server {
         listen 80;
         server_name myapi.com;
         return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
      }

Now the certbot renew command (sudo certbot renew --dry-run) is able to renew the certificate. Strangely, even if I remove this server block, the certbot renewal works fine.

1. Where is the .well-known/acme-challenge path? Is it generated/deleted on the fly?

2. When I remove the server block for port 80, then how is nginx able to renew certificate (because it needs the port 80 for the certbot challenge)?

Answer 1

You need a firewall that allows access on port 80 (http), certbot will start a webserver to supply the acme-challenge file from your domain.