# Discourse website not loading after installation without enabling Let's Encrypt
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-website-not-loading-after-installation-without-enabling-lets-encrypt/147338
**Category:** Self-hosting
**Created:** [April 8, 2020, 7:56pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-website-not-loading-after-installation-without-enabling-lets-encrypt/147338 "2020-04-08T19:56:16Z")
**Posts on this page:** 18
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@007](https://meta.discourse.org/u/007)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2020, 7:56pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-website-not-loading-after-installation-without-enabling-lets-encrypt/147338/1 "2020-04-08T19:56:16Z")
I know enough to be dangerous when sitting in front of an open SSH session. I went through the installation just fine the other day and it worked.
Today, however, I had to rebuild (I’ve been on a development server, not production) and after going through the same steps, nothing comes up after running **./discourse-setup** and going to the website after the installation was complete.
I’ve also run **./launcher start app** and still nothing.
What are some typical things I should do to troubleshoot the install?
---
### Author:  [@Canapin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Canapin)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2020, 7:57pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-website-not-loading-after-installation-without-enabling-lets-encrypt/147338/2 "2020-04-08T19:57:53Z")
No message, error of any kind after **./discourse-setup** or **./launcher start app**?
---
### Author:  [@Stephen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Stephen)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2020, 8:12pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-website-not-loading-after-installation-without-enabling-lets-encrypt/147338/3 "2020-04-08T20:12:23Z")
Tell us how the environments are different.
Are you using a reverse proxy? CloudFlare?
Where are you hosting the production install?
---
### Author:  [@007](https://meta.discourse.org/u/007)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2020, 8:15pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-website-not-loading-after-installation-without-enabling-lets-encrypt/147338/4 "2020-04-08T20:15:58Z")
Nope, installation seems to have been successful. When I check **docker info** I’m seeing that the container is running as well.
I’m running Amazon Linux 2 on AWS and this worked the other day on this same OS. CloudFlare is used for DNS only for this domain.
Here’s the exact order of what I did. Git, docker, and ncat were installed via **amazon-linux-extras** as prompted during the install (but this shouldn’t be an issue since I had a working dev forum the other day).
1. Install git
2. Install and start docker
3. Install ncat
4. Install discourse
5. Install nginx1.12
---
### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2020, 8:39pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-website-not-loading-after-installation-without-enabling-lets-encrypt/147338/5 "2020-04-08T20:39:48Z")
> [@007](#):
>
> Install nginx1.12
Why did you do that?
---
### Author:  [@007](https://meta.discourse.org/u/007)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2020, 8:52pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-website-not-loading-after-installation-without-enabling-lets-encrypt/147338/6 "2020-04-08T20:52:13Z")
A fair question. 😂 I did that because it wasn’t working after step 4… haha. Should I uninstall?
---
### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2020, 8:55pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-website-not-loading-after-installation-without-enabling-lets-encrypt/147338/7 "2020-04-08T20:55:39Z")
Yes. Uninstall.
It’s probably a DNS problem.
What does `curl localhost` return?
What does `tail /var/discourse/shared/logs/var-log/nginx/access.log` show?
---
### Author:  [@Stephen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Stephen)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2020, 9:05pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-website-not-loading-after-installation-without-enabling-lets-encrypt/147338/8 "2020-04-08T21:05:45Z")
Discourse includes a webserver inside the container.
---
### Author:  [@007](https://meta.discourse.org/u/007)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2020, 9:16pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-website-not-loading-after-installation-without-enabling-lets-encrypt/147338/9 "2020-04-08T21:16:57Z")
> [@pfaffman](#):
>
> It’s probably a DNS problem.
`curl: (7) Failed to connect to localhost port 80: Connection refused`
> [@pfaffman](#):
>
> What does `tail /var/discourse/shared/logs/var-log/nginx/access.log` show?
`tail: cannot open ‘/var/discourse/shared/logs/var-log/nginx/access.log’ for reading: No such file or directory`
I ran the normal install, but I confirmed the **shared** folder doesn’t even exist.
Thanks for your help, by the way! Like I said, I know enough to be dangerous… and not always in a good way. 😎
---
### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2020, 9:26pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-website-not-loading-after-installation-without-enabling-lets-encrypt/147338/10 "2020-04-08T21:26:42Z")
Sorry.
`tail /var/discourse/shared/standalone/logs/var-log/nginx/access.log`
Or, if it’s still wrong,
```
find /var/discourse/shared -name access.log
```
to see where the log file is.
---
### Author:  [@007](https://meta.discourse.org/u/007)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2020, 9:52pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-website-not-loading-after-installation-without-enabling-lets-encrypt/147338/11 "2020-04-08T21:52:52Z")
> [@pfaffman](#):
>
> find /var/discourse/shared -name access.log
Found it in here:
```
/var/discourse/shared/standalone/log/var-log/nginx/
```
There was no access.log, but there was an error.log.
The same line was in it over and over (real domain replaced with [example.com](http://example.com) here):
```
2020/04/08 19:46:34 [emerg] 2112#2112: cannot load certificate "/shared/ssl/example.com.cer": PEM_read_bio_X509_AUX() failed (SSL: error:0909006C:PEM routines:get_name:no start line:Expecting: TRUSTED CERTIFICATE)
```
I didn’t go through the certificate process with Let’s Encrypt because I already have a certificate for this domain. Do I still need to do Let’s Encrypt as well?
---
### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2020, 9:57pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-website-not-loading-after-installation-without-enabling-lets-encrypt/147338/12 "2020-04-08T21:57:04Z")
> [@007](#):
>
> cannot load certificate
You need a certificate.
> [@007](#):
>
> I already have a certificate for this domain.
You can search for and find the instructions for installing your own certificate, that say that it’s a huge pain, or you can get one for free and zero trouble by allowing Let’s Encrypt to get it for you.
---
### Author:  [@007](https://meta.discourse.org/u/007)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2020, 10:15pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-website-not-loading-after-installation-without-enabling-lets-encrypt/147338/13 "2020-04-08T22:15:41Z")
Well, would you look at that. It worked.
Thanks @pfaffman and everyone else who replied. 👍
---
### Author:  [@007](https://meta.discourse.org/u/007)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2020, 10:26pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-website-not-loading-after-installation-without-enabling-lets-encrypt/147338/14 "2020-04-08T22:26:53Z")
Actually, I take that back. Chrome loaded the window in a mode where it showed the last successful page load but an incognito refresh shows it’s still not working. Total fail on my part. 🤦♂️
Is there a link to how to get the Let’s Encrypt certificate set up? I need to review what I did (or didn’t do).
---
### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2020, 10:31pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-website-not-loading-after-installation-without-enabling-lets-encrypt/147338/15 "2020-04-08T22:31:56Z")
Just run `discourse-setup`. When it asks about let’s encrypt, give it any email address, or your own if you want to get an email if they think you need to renew.
---
### Author:  [@007](https://meta.discourse.org/u/007)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2020, 10:41pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-website-not-loading-after-installation-without-enabling-lets-encrypt/147338/16 "2020-04-08T22:41:38Z")
Ok, that’s what I did… I figured that was all based on the install guide, but I’m still getting blank pages.
Looks like Discourse is looking for the cert in the **/shared/ssl/** directory, but the actual location of my cert is **/shared/standalone/ssl/**
My app.yml configuration is set to:
```
## The Docker container is stateless; all data is stored in /shared
volumes:
```
- volume:
host: /var/discourse/shared/standalone
guest: /shared
- volume:
host: /var/discourse/shared/standalone/log/var-log
guest: /var/log
---
### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2020, 10:44pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-website-not-loading-after-installation-without-enabling-lets-encrypt/147338/17 "2020-04-08T22:44:55Z")
You can try
```plaintext
cd /var/discourse
rm -r shared/standalone/ssl shared/standalone/letsencrypt
./launcher rebuild app
```
The `rm` line is from memory. If those don’t exist, find what I should have typed.
---
### Author:  [@007](https://meta.discourse.org/u/007)
#### Post date: [April 9, 2020, 12:58am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-website-not-loading-after-installation-without-enabling-lets-encrypt/147338/18 "2020-04-09T00:58:08Z")
So, it looks like I’m up against a 10 certificate in a week limit with Let’s Encrypt. I guess that explains part of why I can’t continue past this step.
Here’s what I found from somebody else experiencing this problem after several rebuilds: [Trouble with SSL after lots of rebuilds - #14 by pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/t/trouble-with-ssl-after-lots-of-rebuilds/139637/14)
So, I supposed I have no other option right now than to install my own cert that I already own?