[Let's Encrypt] How to resolve 'The requested nginx plugin does not appear to be installed'

Tadashi Shigeoka ·  Tue, April 23, 2019

I’ll introduce how to resolve the error The requested nginx plugin does not appear to be installed in Let’s Encrypt.

Let's Encrypt

Prerequisites

  • SSL Certificate: Let's Encrypt
  • Server: Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS

Error Condition) The requested nginx plugin does not appear to be installed

$ certbot --version
certbot 0.31.0

When I executed the certbot command as follows, the error “The requested nginx plugin does not appear to be installed” occurred.

$ sudo certbot \\
--authenticator standalone \\
--installer nginx \\
-d example.com \\
--pre-hook "/bin/systemctl stop nginx" \\
--post-hook "/bin/systemctl start nginx"

Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log
The requested nginx plugin does not appear to be installed

Solution) Install python-certbot-nginx

To resolve the error “The requested nginx plugin does not appear to be installed”, simply install python-certbot-nginx.

sudo apt-get install python-certbot-nginx

That’s all from the Gemba, where we installed the Let’s Encrypt Nginx plugin that was missing.