ValueError: Unable to set value to path! Unable to install the certificate

[dchmelik]

Others had this same bug three to four years ago but the bug reports were automatically closed prematurely (haven't been solved); let's not have that happen this time! It said it was not installed then installed (so maybe just not for all subdomains?) but then testing browsing the domain & subdomains there's no SSL.

My operating system is (include version):

RaspiOS 2023-05-03 (based on Debian 11)

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

apt-get (OS package manager also for dependencies)

I ran this command and it produced this output (really my domain instead of example.com. but being partly anonymous here):

root@server:~# certbot --apache
Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log
Plugins selected: Authenticator apache, Installer apache
[asked/did input here]
Requesting a certificate for example.com and 2 more domains
Created an SSL vhost at /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default-le-ssl.conf
Deploying Certificate to VirtualHost /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default-le-ssl.conf
Enabling available site: /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default-le-ssl.conf
Created an SSL vhost at /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default-le-ssl.conf
Deploying Certificate to VirtualHost /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default-le-ssl.conf
An unexpected error occurred:
ValueError: Unable to set value to path!
Please see the logfiles in /var/log/letsencrypt for more details.

IMPORTANT NOTES:
 - Unable to install the certificate
 - Congratulations! Your certificate and chain have been saved at:
   /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com-0001/fullchain.pem
   Your key file has been saved at:
   /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com-0001/privkey.pem
   Your certificate will expire on 2023-10-21. To obtain a new or
   tweaked version of this certificate in the future, simply run
   certbot again with the "certonly" option. To non-interactively
   renew *all* of your certificates, run "certbot renew"

Certbot's behavior differed from what I expected because:

Used to work.

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.

gist (really my domain & email address instead of example.com. but being partly anonymous here... on the second try above, ended up not requesting for mail.example com (no WWW) nor search.example.com (YaCy not currently up))

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

<VirtualHost *:80>
# The ServerName directive sets the request scheme, hostname and port that
# the server uses to identify itself. This is used when creating
# redirection URLs. In the context of virtual hosts, the ServerName
# specifies what hostname must appear in the request's Host: header to
# match this virtual host. For the default virtual host (this file) this
# value is not decisive as it is used as a last resort host regardless.
# However, you must set it for any further virtual host explicitly.
ServerName example.com
ServerAlias www.example.com
ServerAdmin webmaster@example.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/example
# Available loglevels: trace8, ..., trace1, debug, info, notice, warn,
# error, crit, alert, emerg.
# It is also possible to configure the loglevel for particular
# modules, e.g.
#LogLevel info ssl:warn
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/example.com.error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/example.com.access.log combined
# For most configuration files from conf-available/, which are
# enabled or disabled at a global level, it is possible to
# include a line for only one particular virtual host. For the
# following line enables the CGI configuration for this host only
# after it has been globally disabled with "a2disconf".
#Include conf-available/serve-cgi-bin.conf
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName ftp.example.com
ServerAdmin webmaster@example.com
DocumentROot /home/ftp
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/ftp.example.com.error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/ftp.example.com.access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName slackbuilds.example.com
ServerAdmin webmaster@example.com
DocumentROot /var/www/example/math/slackbuilds
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/slackbuilds.example.com.error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/slackbuilds.example.com.access.log combined
</VirtualHost>