Help Needed: HTTPS Certificates Not Auto-Renewing After VestaCP → HestiaCP Migration

1

Hello everyone,

I hope you’re doing well. I’m running into an issue where my HTTPS certificates—both for the main website and the webmail—are not renewing automatically. I migrated from VestaCP to HestiaCP at the end of November last year, and since then the automated renewal process has stopped working.

Managing this manually has become a real challenge because I have over 500 clients. Every day I receive complaints, so I trigger the renewal by hand. Even after a successful manual renewal, I still need to restart both Nginx and Apache2.

Has anyone else experienced this problem or have any idea what might be causing it? I’m a bit lost.

Thank you in advance for any help!

3

Check if the cronjob is running

4

So the file is being executed.

{2CF3A8EA-9FDA-4013-A8BC-4A6A9138352C}
{2CF3A8EA-9FDA-4013-A8BC-4A6A9138352C}1173×638 43.3 KB

I logged in via SSH and ran the script manually, and it worked perfectly. I’ve also verified that the cron job is active and running as expected.

`root@kingteste2:~# service cron status
● cron.service - Regular background program processing daemon
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/cron.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Fri 2025-04-18 15:44:20 -03; 1 week 2 days ago
Docs: man:cron(8)
Main PID: 2664801 (cron)
CGroup: /system.slice/cron.service
├─ 969800 sleep 1
├─2385614 /usr/sbin/CRON -f
├─2385617 /bin/sh -c “TERM=xterm /bin/bash /code/sentinela.sh >> /var/log/iniciaSentinela.log 2>&1”
├─2385619 /bin/bash /code/sentinela.sh
└─2664801 /usr/sbin/cron -f

Apr 28 12:48:01 kingteste2.com.br CRON[950042]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
Apr 28 12:50:01 kingteste2.com.br CRON[955724]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root(uid=0) by (uid=0)
Apr 28 12:50:01 kingteste2.com.br CRON[955725]: (root) CMD (/bin/bash /code/sentinela/smsAvisos.sh Clone2 200 >> /var/l>
Apr 28 12:50:01 kingteste2.com.br CRON[955724]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
Apr 28 12:52:01 kingteste2.com.br CRON[961371]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root(uid=0) by (uid=0)
Apr 28 12:52:01 kingteste2.com.br CRON[961372]: (root) CMD (/bin/bash /code/sentinela/smsAvisos.sh Clone2 200 >> /var/l>
Apr 28 12:52:01 kingteste2.com.br CRON[961371]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
Apr 28 12:54:01 kingteste2.com.br CRON[968727]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root(uid=0) by (uid=0)
Apr 28 12:54:01 kingteste2.com.br CRON[968728]: (root) CMD (/bin/bash /code/sentinela/smsAvisos.sh Clone2 200 >> /var/l>
Apr 28 12:54:01 kingteste2.com.br CRON[968727]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
lines 1-22/22 (END)
`

I’ve reviewed both the application logs and the cron logs, and there are no errors.

5

Cron service yes, but not the cron jobs for hestiaweb user.

Show the output of these commands:

grep -r 'CRON.*v-update-lets' /var/log/syslog*
crontab -l -u hestiaweb | cat -A
ls -la /var/spool/cron/crontabs/
6

This command produced no output.

grep -r 'CRON.v-update-lets’ /var/log/syslog

This one returned output.

crontab -l -u hestiaweb | cat -A

MAILTO=“”$
CONTENT_TYPE=“text/plain; charset=utf-8”$
*/2 * * * * sudo /usr/local/hestia/bin/v-update-sys-queue restart$
10 00 * * * sudo /usr/local/hestia/bin/v-update-sys-queue daily$
15 02 * * * sudo /usr/local/hestia/bin/v-update-sys-queue disk$
10 00 * * * sudo /usr/local/hestia/bin/v-update-sys-queue traffic$
30 03 * * * sudo /usr/local/hestia/bin/v-update-sys-queue webstats$
*/5 * * * * sudo /usr/local/hestia/bin/v-update-sys-queue backup$
#10 05 * * * sudo /usr/local/hestia/bin/v-backup-users$
20 00 * * * sudo /usr/local/hestia/bin/v-update-user-stats$
*/5 * * * * sudo /usr/local/hestia/bin/v-update-sys-rrd$
34 2 * * * sudo /usr/local/hestia/bin/v-update-letsencrypt-ssl

This other command, ls -la /var/spool/cron/crontabs/, returned the following output:

total 216
drwx-wx–T 2 root crontab 4096 Apr 10 08:26 .
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Mar 1 20:41 …
-rw------- 1 admin admin 10205 Apr 10 08:26 admin
-rw------- 1 hestiaweb hestiaweb 674 Mar 23 16:40 hestiaweb
-rw------- 1 root root 675 Mar 23 16:40 hestiaweb.vst.back

It also lists all my clients, which I’ve omitted here.

7

Ok, do two things to fix it.

rm /var/spool/cron/crontabs/hestiaweb.vst.back

And edit the hestiaweb’s crontab and save the file.

crontab -e -u hestiaweb

After five minutes you could check syslog to see whether the cron jobs are running:

grep -r 'CRON.*hestiaweb.*v-' /var/log/syslog
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8

Thank you, Sahsanu, for resolving the issue. Your help was exactly what I needed. I followed your procedure, and everything is working perfectly now. Thank you very much!

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