Certbot renew: nginx: [error] open() "/run/nginx.pid" failed (2: No such file or directory)

Try to execute:

sudo service nginx restart

Then test your nginx configuration file(s) (until you see "nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful")

sudo nginx -s reload -t

Pay attention on paths to certificates, and other stuff

and then reload configuration without -t option:

sudo nginx -s reload

It's not recommended to modify configuration files in /etc/letsencrypt/ but creating (if it doesn't exist) and modifying cli.ini file here is working for me. You can specify post-hook in this file once and it will work for all your certificates, see my current file:

# /etc/letsencrypt/cli.inimax-log-backups = 0authenticator = webrootwebroot-path = /var/www/htmlpost-hook = service nginx reloadtext = True

I hope this will help future readers. Solution source is here (however the article is in Russian)

I had the same issue on Ubuntu 16.04

I've just removed post and pre hooks in /etc/letsencrypt/renewal/*.conf and changed authenticator to nginx - I had in two entries standalone.

And it is working now fine.

Edit:

Recommended way to update renewal config is to reissue new certificate using:

certbot -i nginx -d example.com -d www.example.com certonly

I had the same error...

When I installed certbot, I followed the instructions and put in a cronjob (5 3 15 * *):

certbot renew --pre-hook "service nginx stop" --post-hook "service nginx start"

this morning nginx was dead, and the log showed

open() "/run/nginx.pid" failed (2: No such file or directory)

I did not connect the two, but do I understand that certbot triggers the nginx failure?