My Discourse is Down. Certificate Issue?

[WesPenre]

Hi,

When people try to log in, depending on the browser, they get the following messages:

BRAVE:

This site can’t be reached

The webpage at https://wespenreboards.com/ might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address.

ERR_FAILED”

FIREFOX:

"Warning: Potential Security Risk Ahead

Firefox detected an issue and did not continue to wespenreboards.com. The website is either misconfigured or your computer clock is set to the wrong time.

It’s likely the website’s certificate is expired, which prevents Firefox from connecting securely. If you visit this site, attackers could try to steal information like your passwords, emails, or credit card details."

Has a certificate expired? If so, what do I do?

My URL is, wespenreboards.com/

Thanks,
Wes Penre

[agungor (Arman Gungor)]

Looks like your Let’s Encrypt cert expired today. I suggest reviewing the document below—especially the Debugging section:

Setting up HTTPS support with Let's Encrypt

This guide is only for existing installs where HTTPS is not enabled. Following the official setup guide automatically enables HTTPS by default. So you’d like to add https to your Discourse absolutely free, courtesy of our friends at Let’s Encrypt? Is everything else on your site ready for HTTPS? Before you start, please bear in mind that for HTTPS to work properly, every single resource on the page must be HTTPS compatible. Consider your CDN, your social logins, your…

[WesPenre]

Hi Arman,

Thanks for the reference. Sorry, but this tech language is like Greek to me. I read the instructions, but I’m at a loss. Don’t even know where to start. I have no foreknowledge. Not sure what to do…

I didn’t even know I had a certificate. Isn’t there an easy way to just update it?

[Stephen]

How did you build your site at first?

[WesPenre]

I didn’t. A Discourse Support person built it for me. And I am hosted by Digital Ocean. But that person is no longer a Discourse Support person.

[WesPenre]

I just noticed that my Discourse does not have an app.yml file, so I created one (see screenshot). However, the new yml file does not show up in the directory (again, see screenshot). What to do? Should I enter certain information to the file? If so, what should I add?

[JammyDodger]

Hi @WesPenre

If I remember rightly, you have a two-container set-up so you won’t have an app.yml, as neither of your containers are called app.

Have you done a rebuild of your Discourse recently? I think letsencrypt should use that as an opportunity to renew your certificates.

If you’re on a two-container set-up I think you can do this by using the ‘access console’ on your Digital Ocean droplet page for an easy way to SSH into your server, and then:

cd /var/discourse
git pull
./launcher bootstrap web_only && ./launcher destroy web_only && ./launcher start web_only

[WesPenre]

Thanks, JammyDodger! Running it now, and we’ll see what happens.

[WesPenre]

It’s finished, but I still cannot log into wespenreboards.com/ .

[JammyDodger]

Seems to be working fine for me so far? Secure connection, plus I have just signed up to test and you should see me in the approval queue.

[WesPenre]

Yay! Now I see your request! Do you want me to make you an Admin, so you can check it all out?

[JammyDodger]

It seems like everything is working as intended, so you can probably just delete that test account. I don’t think the admin UI will tell me anything useful in this case (though we can always sign me up for another one in the future if you need something else )

Though, just to check, is everything working as expected now?

[WesPenre]

OK, sounds good regarding your test account. I’ll delete it… I will check now if everything seems to work, and I’ll be back here…

[WesPenre]

Yes, it’s working again! I really, really appreciate this, JammyDodger. Thanks a lot!

[WesPenre]

Oh, one last question. Why did the certificate expire? Will it expire again in the future?

[WesPenre]

Never mind… It seems like I should have upgraded to Beta 4 earlier and that was probably the problem.

[Benjamin_D (Benjamin Decotte)]

yes it will

Why ninety-day lifetimes for certificates? - Let's Encrypt

but rest assured, renewal should be automatic

[JammyDodger]

There are also a couple of bits in this topic that you might find useful to keep your server uptodate:

How do I manually update Discourse and Docker image to latest?

If you self-host Discourse, you occasionally need to run a manual update via the command line to get the latest security releases newest libraries. These updates are not picked up in admin/upgrade, which is why you’ll occasionally need to do this additional step. Discourse itself should be updated about twice a month, by clicking the “Update to Latest Version” button in your admin dashboard ( admin/upgrade). We do beta releases roughly once every week. Every two months we recommend SSH’ing…

Just remember that you don’t have an app.yml as you have a two-container set-up, so the commands in Step 2 would be the ones from above:

cd /var/discourse
git pull
./launcher bootstrap web_only && ./launcher destroy web_only && ./launcher start web_only

[WesPenre]

@JammyDodger

might find useful to keep your server uptodat

Very helpful, thank you!

[WesPenre]

@JammyDodger

cd /var/discourse
git pull
./launcher bootstrap web_only && ./launcher destroy web_only && ./launcher start web_only

I have the certificate issue again, and I used the commands above to try to renew, but I got an error message on my console (Digital Ocean). See attachment. And I still can’t log into Discourse. How should I proceed?

URL: https://wespenreboards.com/