Certbot renewed last night and now nginx fails to start with "duplicate listen directive" errors. I checked /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ and certbot duplicated the entire server block for port 443. Running on OVHcloud VPS. Yes I ran certbot as root because it needs to bind port 80, fight me.
Error log shows:
nginx: [emerg] duplicate listen 0.0.0.0:443 in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/mysite-le-ssl.conf:12
Help before my site has been down for 3 hours
Pro tip: certbot with nginx plugin should handle this automatically but heads up, running as root changes file permissions in ways that break unattended renewal later.
Quick fix without the mess:
1. Stop nginx: sudo systemctl stop nginx
2. Remove the duplicate: sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/mysite-le-ssl.conf
3. Restore from your backup of /etc/nginx/sites-available/mysite
4. Run: sudo certbot --nginx -d example.com --reinstall
5. Test: sudo nginx -t
6. Start: sudo systemctl start nginx
Check permissions with ls -l /etc/letsencrypt/archive/ afterward. Root-only means certbot cant auto-renew without root cronjob, which is a security headache you dont need.
Member
Which OS and nginx version?
> running as root changes file permissions
Yep
