cert-manager

cert-manager: Failed to register ACME account: invalid character '<' looking for beginning of value

I installed the cert-manager using the Helm Chart. I created a ClusterIssuer but I see that it's on a failed state:

kubectl describe clusterissuer letsencrypt-staging
ErrRegisterACMEAccount Failed to register ACME account: invalid character '<' looking for beginning of value

What could be causing this invalid character '<'?

Solution

  • This error is most likely the result of an incorrect server url, the url you specified is returning HTML (hence the complain about <).

    Make sure that your server url is https://acme-staging-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory" and NOT just https://acme-staging-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/", the /directory must be included in the url.

    So the ClusterIssuer should look like this (emphasis on the .spec.acme.server)

    kind: ClusterIssuer
metadata:
  name: letsencrypt-staging
spec:
  acme:
    email: name.surname@mycompany.com
    privateKeySecretRef:
      name: letsencrypt-staging
    server: https://acme-staging-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory
    solvers:
    - dns01:
        route53:
          hostedZoneID: XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
          region: eu-north-1
      selector:
        dnsZones:
        - xxx.yyy.mycompany.com