Certbot-nginx does not work with systemctl?

[soggie]

My operating system is (include version):

Distributor ID:	Ubuntu
Description:	Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS
Release:	16.04
Codename:	xenial

I installed Certbot with (certbot-auto, OS package manager, pip, etc):

certbot-auto, as per https://certbot.eff.org/#ubuntuxenial-nginx

I ran this command and it produced this output:

Basically, I control nginx using systemctl. However, a quick look at certbot-nginx's code reveals that when it restarts, it manually calls the command nginx directly, and there's no way I can disable or change that. Pre and post hooks don't even work because of that.

Certbot's behavior differed from what I expected because:

Expected behaviour is to provide an option to override the restart command, so we don't call restart multiple times.

Here is a Certbot log showing the issue (if available):

Logs are stored in /var/log/letsencrypt by default. Feel free to redact domains, e-mail and IP addresses as you see fit.

Not sure which part of the logs are relevant for this issue.

Here is the relevant nginx server block or Apache virtualhost for the domain I am configuring:

Not applicable.

[SwartzCr]

Would you be able to link to the code you're referring to? I'm confused about which calls you're talking about.
That said, I think @ohemorange would be best equipped to answer this question.

[soggie]

@SwartzCr thanks. Here's the code:

https://github.com/certbot/certbot/blob/master/certbot-nginx/certbot_nginx/configurator.py#L689

    def config_test(self):  # pylint: disable=no-self-use
        """Check the configuration of Nginx for errors.
        :raises .errors.MisconfigurationError: If config_test fails
        """
        try:
            util.run_script([self.conf('ctl'), "-c", self.nginx_conf, "-t"])
        except errors.SubprocessError as err:
            raise errors.MisconfigurationError(str(err))

From my understanding, if we are to say, manage nginx using systemctl, this would make it quite impossible to stick to systemctl.

[ohemorange]

@soggie see comment here, that should work in this situation: #5486 (comment)

if it doesn't there's always the standalone plugin, which won't start or stop nginx at all, and you can do that as you'd like in the hooks.

[stale]

To help us better see what issues are still affecting our users, this issue has been automatically marked as stale. If you still have this issue with an up-to-date version of Certbot and are interested in seeing it resolved, please add a comment letting us know. If there is no further activity, this issue will be automatically closed.

[bmw]

This issue has been closed due to lack of activity, but if you think it should be reopened, please open a new issue with a link to this one and we'll take a look.