• Our team is looking to connect with folks who use email services provided by Plesk, or a premium service. If you'd like to be part of the discovery process and share your experiences, we invite you to complete this short screening survey. If your responses match the persona we are looking for, you'll receive a link to schedule a call at your convenience. We look forward to hearing from you!
  • We are looking for U.S.-based freelancer or agency working with SEO or WordPress for a quick 30-min interviews to gather feedback on XOVI, a successful German SEO tool we’re looking to launch in the U.S.
    If you qualify and participate, you’ll receive a $30 Amazon gift card as a thank-you. Please apply here. Thanks for helping shape a better SEO product for agencies!
  • The BIND DNS server has already been deprecated and removed from Plesk for Windows.
    If a Plesk for Windows server is still using BIND, the upgrade to Plesk Obsidian 18.0.70 will be unavailable until the administrator switches the DNS server to Microsoft DNS. We strongly recommend transitioning to Microsoft DNS within the next 6 weeks, before the Plesk 18.0.70 release.
  • The Horde component is removed from Plesk Installer. We recommend switching to another webmail software supported in Plesk.

Question Renewing Let's Encrypt with external DNS servers

klowet

Basic Pleskian
Server operating system version
Debian 12
Plesk version and microupdate number
18.0.60
Hi

A client has problems renewing the Let's Encrypt certificates for his websites.
He is using external DNS servers, not linked to his Plesk server.

** 'Lets Encrypt example.com' [days to expire: 27] **
[-] *.example.com
[-] example.com

Invalid response from https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/acme/authz-v3/33964115XXXX.
Details:
Type: urn:ietf: params:acme:error:unauthorized
Status: 403
Detail: Incorrect TXT record "UZ39H4i9vmwPb9fWX4qo_B2MTqBcf2oyIGOV6-_H2UU" found at _acme-challenge.example.com

Is the TXT _acme record updated every time the certificate is renewed? In other words, does he have to manually update the TXT records of his domains each 3 months?
Or is something else in my Plesk configuration wrong?

Thanks
 
Is the TXT _acme record updated every time the certificate is renewed? In other words, does he have to manually update the TXT records of his domains each 3 months?
Yes

Or is something else in my Plesk configuration wrong?
No

Only Let's Encrypt certificates with the wildcard option enabled need authentication/verification via DNS. If you don't want that, you or your client can manually re-issue an certificates for the domain without the Wildcard option enabled.
 
Hi
A client has problems renewing the Let's Encrypt certificates for his websites.
He is using external DNS servers, not linked to his Plesk server.
Is the TXT _acme record updated every time the certificate is renewed? In other words, does he have to manually update the TXT records of his domains each 3 months?
Or is something else in my Plesk configuration wrong?

Thanks

Only Let's Encrypt certificates with the wildcard option enabled need authentication/verification via DNS. If you don't want that, you or your client can manually re-issue an certificates for the domain without the Wildcard option enabled.
The correct replies from @Kaspar already answer your questions @klowet but FWIW we also use external DNS (exclusively) but we renew all our Let's Encrypt SSL Certificates (for non-wildcard certificates / wildcard certificates / SAN certificates) via cron and API access for all of the preceding by using acme.sh which works perfectly every time.
 
Only Let's Encrypt certificates with the wildcard option enabled need authentication/verification via DNS. If you don't want that, you or your client can manually re-issue an certificates for the domain without the Wildcard option enabled.
Ohh okay! That explains it. To be sure:

A wildcard certificate does require a new _acme TXT record each renewal. And a non-wildcard certificate does not. Correct?

When he should use the Plesk DNS and wildcard certificates, the _acme TXT is updated automatically. Correct?

Thanks
 
Ohh okay! That explains it. To be sure:

A wildcard certificate does require a new _acme TXT record each renewal. And a non-wildcard certificate does not. Correct?
Yes. However to clarify this a bit further and avoid any confusion: a non-wildcard certificate does not require a DNS record at all.

When he should use the Plesk DNS and wildcard certificates, the _acme TXT is updated automatically. Correct?
Yes
 
Back
Top