Editing Setting up HTTPS using Let's Encrypt (section)

== Additional Notes ==
The default EPrints Apache Rewrite handler declines any requests to a URL containing <code>/.</code>.  However, this should not mean that the challenge/response for a Let's Encrypt certificate renewal that uses the <code>/.well-known/acme-challenge/</code> path will fail.  As if a request is declined by the handler, it should drop through to looking for the file on the <code>DocumentRoot</code> either set for the Apache or a specific VirtualHost.  

You can test to confirm this by creating a <code>.well-known/acme-challenge/</code> directory in your <code>DocumentRoot</code>.  Typically, this will be something like <code>/var/www/html/.well-known/acme-challenge/</code>.  If you then add a small text file you can request (e.g. <code>test.txt</code>) to this directory and then see if you can download it from your web browser, (e.g. <code>http://example.eprints.org/.well-known/acme-challenge/test.txt</code>), if you can download this, Let's Encrypt Acme challenges should work and you can remove the <code>.well-known</code> directory as Certbot will re-create this when it needs it.

However, if this does not work, you could make this work you could add a location block to your Apache config, to ensure the <code>/.well-known/</code> are not handled by EPrints, or use an EPrints URL rewrite trigger to handle the request:

<syntaxhighlight lang="perl">
#this could be saved into e.g. [EPRINTS_ROOT]/lib/cfg.d/z_rewrite_url_LetsEncrypt.pl

# import Apache constant e.g. 'OK'
use EPrints::Apache::AnApache;

$c->add_trigger( EP_TRIGGER_URL_REWRITE, sub {
        my( %o ) = @_;

        # if the incoming request matches the LetsEncrypt challenge URL...
        if( $o{uri} =~ m!^${o{urlpath}}/\.well-known/acme-challenge/! )
        {
                # and the LetsEncrypt renewal process has put the file in EPRINTS_ROOT/archives/ARCHIVEID/html/.well-known/acme-challenge/
                if( -f $o{repository}->get_conf( "htdocs_path" ).$o{uri} )
                {
                        # reply with an HTTP '200' 
                        ${$o{return_code}} = OK;
                        # and return the file reqested
                        $o{request}->filename( $o{repository}->get_conf( "htdocs_path" ).$o{uri} );
                }
                # and say that we've handled the request - so no more triggers should be run.
                return EP_TRIGGER_DONE;
        }
} );
</syntaxhighlight>