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How to setup SSL with a subdomain from FreeDNS?

sd flag

I'm trying to get HTTPS setup for free (which might be the root cause of my issues), but am having an issue getting a SSL cert for my subdomain.

I used FreeDNS to create a subdomain that points to my server. For those unfamiliar with FreeDNS, it's important to note that the subdomain I created is built on top of someone's public domain that has been shared.

My current issue is trying to get LetEncrypt/Certbot to create the cert. As per the Certbot docs, I ran

$ certbot --nginx

which asks for the domain. When I enter my subdomain (ex: blah.moooo.com), I see this error

E: Cannot issue for "blah.moooo.com": Domain name contains an invalid character

I've seen some tutorials online that indicate when passing a subdomain to certbot, you need to provide the base domain first, for example:

$ certbot -d company.com sales.company.com

Since I don't actually own the moooo.com domain, I don't imagine I'd be able to pass this domain (and then my subdomain) to certbot. Am I incorrect? Am i missing something altogether?

Steffen Ullrich avatar
se flag
I'm assuming that this is not the actual name of the domain you provide here. My guess is that the name you use actually contains an invalid character, while the domain you give as example here does not. This means it would be helpful if you provide the real name of the site or at least a version which leaves everything except replacing the 36 alphanumeric characters (ASCII only) and only these with 'X'.
AwoeDace avatar
sd flag
Yup, just barely realized my dumb mistake. My subdomain had an underscore, which I guess is somewhat allowed because FreeDNS was okay with it, and I could access it in the browser, but I did some more testing and found out that was the cause. Thanks!
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