Http-01 Challenge failed and Connection refused

Question

I just bought a new server, and want to follow this for www.pretty-formula.com.

Here is the record I added to pretty-formula.com:

In the server, ufw status returned Status: inactive.

After putting pretty-formula.com in related files, I got this error:

root@iZj6ce932fiflob4gudnajZ:~/nginx-certbot# ./init-letsencrypt.sh 
Existing data found for pretty-formula.com. Continue and replace existing certificate? (y/N) y
### Creating dummy certificate for pretty-formula.com ...
Generating a RSA private key
......+++++
.........+++++
writing new private key to '/etc/letsencrypt/live/pretty-formula.com/privkey.pem'
-----
failed to resize tty, using default size

### Starting nginx ...
Recreating nginx-certbot_nginx_1 ... done

### Deleting dummy certificate for pretty-formula.com ...
failed to resize tty, using default size

### Requesting Let's Encrypt certificate for pretty-formula.com ...
Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log
Plugins selected: Authenticator webroot, Installer None
Obtaining a new certificate
Performing the following challenges:
http-01 challenge for pretty-formula.com
http-01 challenge for www.pretty-formula.com
Using the webroot path /var/www/certbot for all unmatched domains.
Waiting for verification...
Challenge failed for domain pretty-formula.com
Challenge failed for domain www.pretty-formula.com
http-01 challenge for pretty-formula.com
http-01 challenge for www.pretty-formula.com
Cleaning up challenges
Some challenges have failed.

IMPORTANT NOTES:
 - The following errors were reported by the server:

   Domain: pretty-formula.com
   Type:   connection
   Detail: Fetching
   http://pretty-formula.com/.well-known/acme-challenge/-yXehDZroR0bFBusF3tEM9Ja9tD1XEXDmAiDnWgP6u8:
   Connection refused

   Domain: www.pretty-formula.com
   Type:   connection
   Detail: Fetching
   http://www.pretty-formula.com/.well-known/acme-challenge/KbU_eUlIBexvG1zqN-UKB7lhdiIc7MEOYar1w-vlPNs:
   Connection refused

   To fix these errors, please make sure that your domain name was
   entered correctly and the DNS A/AAAA record(s) for that domain
   contain(s) the right IP address. Additionally, please check that
   your computer has a publicly routable IP address and that no
   firewalls are preventing the server from communicating with the
   client. If you're using the webroot plugin, you should also verify
   that you are serving files from the webroot path you provided.

### Reloading nginx ...
cannot exec in a stopped state: unknown

It's a new server and a new domain, I don't understand what's blocking. Does anyone know how to investigate further?

Solution

You have to improve your skills in delimiting this kind of problems. You should check things in an order and rule out possible causes one at a time. Now, you are rushing to the http-01 challenge before you have checked all the prerequisites.

Let's start from the suggestions related to the error found from its own notes, as it already suggests a suitable approach.

To fix these errors, please make sure that your domain name was entered correctly and the DNS A/AAAA record(s) for that domain contain(s) the right IP address.

This is the DNS level and it's easy to test using dig or nslookup, e.g.

$ dig pretty-formula.com

;; ANSWER SECTION:
pretty-formula.com.     379     IN      A       47.56.96.10

This was expected as this is the IP address from your screenshot. It's not a DNS problem.

Additionally, please check that your computer has a publicly routable IP address

Yes, 47.56.96.10 is a publicly routable IP address. It's also answering to ping, which is just a method to find it's reachable from the routing perspective. It's not a routing problem.

and that no firewalls are preventing the server from communicating with the client.

The server is not listening on HTTP port 80:

$ nc 47.56.96.10 80 -vvv 
nc: connect to 47.56.96.10 port 80 (tcp) failed: Connection refused

Now, it's harder to tell what's the reason.

• Firewall. You said the firewall is not enabled. You could try and access the web server from itself. If you can connect the server this way, it's probably a firewall issue. E.g.

  curl http://47.56.96.10/
  curl http://127.0.0.1/
  

• If you can't connect your server from itself either, make sure that Nginx is started and it's configured to listen on port 80. It's possible that your web server is not running.

If you're using the webroot plugin, you should also verify that you are serving files from the webroot path you provided.

After you have fixed the previous problem, you may face new problems regarding the web server configuration. If the webroot is /var/www/certbot, you must ensure that http://pretty-formula.com/.well-known/acme-challenge/ goes to file system path /var/www/certbot/.well-known/acme-challenge/.

It's a bit strange that there's Existing data found for pretty-formula.com. if this should be a new domain. It might be that this is not the first time you tried this. You have multiple alternatives to handle this:

• remove the previous configuration from /etc/letsencrypt/renewal/pretty-formula.com and start over OR
• alter the configuration on /etc/letsencrypt/renewal/pretty-formula.com to match your Nginx configuration OR
• configure the Nginx to match the configuration on Let's Encrypt.

Comments

[SoftTimur]

Thank you for this long answer...