Quick Tip: LetsEncrypt “server” error fix on Ubuntu 16.04

I recently had to renew the HTTPS certificates for my server, and ran into trouble.

The errors that the command sudo letsencrypt renew was spewing out were these:

Processing /etc/letsencrypt/renewal/bitfalls.com.conf
2017-02-06 07:43:08,126:WARNING:letsencrypt.cli:Attempting to renew cert from /etc/letsencrypt/renewal/bitfalls.com.conf produced an unexpected error: 'server'. Skipping.
Processing /etc/letsencrypt/renewal/test.bitfalls.com.conf
2017-02-06 07:43:08,408:WARNING:letsencrypt.cli:Attempting to renew cert from /etc/letsencrypt/renewal/test.bitfalls.com.conf produced an unexpected error: 'server'. Skipping.

To save you some googling and experimentation, the error is caused by a missing server configuration entry in the renewal configuration files. To fix this, you can start over completely (i.e. remove the /etc/letsencrypt folder and regenerate everything), or manually insert the missing config entry. Here's how you do the latter.

Updating LetsEncrypt's Configuration Files

If you go into /etc/letsencrypt/renewal, you'll see your current server's cert renewal files:

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by Bruno Skvorc via SitePoint