ACME challenge failing

Virtualmin
1
SYSTEM INFORMATION
OS type and version Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
Webmin version 2.610
Virtualmin version 7.50.2 GPL
Webserver version Nginx 1.24

My home server is setup with Virtualmin with LEMP stack

I am trying to create a proxy v-server for webmin using admin.example.com

My DNS for IPv4 and IPv6 is pointed towards my home server. However, right now only ipv6 is working. Letsencrypt is connecting to IPv6 but getting an invalid host error.

What could be wrong. Below is the Nginx v-server config and error.

Thanks in advance.

Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log
Requesting a certificate for admin.example.com

Certbot failed to authenticate some domains (authenticator: webroot). The Certificate Authority reported these problems:
Domain: admin.example.com
Type: connection
Detail: 2604:3d08:3378:5b50::d169: Fetching https://admin.example.com.well-known/acme-challenge/MctBNquF9b54nIRsx-UclAjxGyLtqFmAJ-NFlPQ0aWE: Invalid host in redirect target “admin.example.com.well-known”. Check webserver config for missing ‘/’ in redirect target.

Hint: The Certificate Authority failed to download the temporary challenge files created by Certbot. Ensure that the listed domains serve their content from the provided --webroot-path/-w and that files created there can be downloaded from the internet.

All challenges have failed.
Ask for help or search for solutions at https://community.letsencrypt.org. See the logfile /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log or re-run Certbot with -v for more details.

server {
listen 80 default_server;
listen [::]:80 default_server;

server_name admin.example.com;
root /home/example/domains/admin.example.com/public_html;
# ACME-challenge
location ^~ /.well-known/acme-challenge/ {
	root /home/example/domains/admin.example.com/public_html;
}

# Force https redirect
location / {
	return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}

}

server {
listen 443 ssl http2 default_server;
listen [::]:443 ssl http2 default_server;

server_name admin.example.com;
root /home/example/domains/admin.example.com/public_html;
# ACME-challenge
location ^~ /.well-known/acme-challenge/ {
	root /home/example/domains/admin.example.com/public_html;
}

ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/virtualmin/17664466542575782/ssl.cert;
ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/virtualmin/17664466542575782/ssl.key;
access_log /var/log/virtualmin/admin.example.com_access_log;
error_log /var/log/virtualmin/admin.example.com_error_log;

location /RequestDenied {
	return 418;
}

location / {
	proxy_pass https://127.0.0.1:10000;

	##
	#Proxy Settings
	##
	proxy_redirect off;
	proxy_set_header Host $host:$server_port;
	proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
	proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
	proxy_max_temp_file_size 0;
	proxy_connect_timeout 90;
	proxy_send_timeout 90;
	proxy_read_timeout 90;
	proxy_buffer_size 128k;
	proxy_buffers 32 32k;
	proxy_busy_buffers_size 256k;
	proxy_temp_file_write_size 256k;

	# Fixes initial redirect after login
	# proxy_redirect https://$host:10000/ https://$http_host/;
}

}

2

Hello,

You can check whether the ACME challenge path is being served correctly without running Let’s Encrypt yet.

First create a test file:

sudo mkdir -p /home/example/domains/admin.example.com/public_html/.well-known/acme-challenge
echo OK | sudo tee /home/example/domains/admin.example.com/public_html/.well-known/acme-challenge/test

Then test from the command line:

curl -IL http://admin.example.com/.well-known/acme-challenge/test

What you want to see is no redirect for that URL (i.e. a 200 OK and it’s not redirecting).

And, make sure to test it (curl command above) on your home computer and your server to see if you get different results.

In essence, if it redirects to something like https://admin.example.com.well-known/... (missing the / after the domain), that means a rewrite/redirect rule is dropping the slash, and it’s coming from a different server block or an included/global Nginx snippet than the one you’re looking at.

To locate it, dump the active Nginx config and search for redirects/rewrite rules:

sudo nginx -T | grep -nE 'server_name admin\.example\.com|rewrite .*https://|return 301|default_server|include '

Also, if you use a CDN/reverse proxy (e.g. Cloudflare proxy), it can apply redirects before the request reaches your server.

3

Thanks a lot for the reply.

My bad, I did not restart the server after installing virtualmin. Once I completed the restart it seemed to work fine.

Thanks again