Wondering how to resolve BIO_new_file: certificate not found error in Plesk? We can help you.

At Bobcares, we offer solutions for every query, big and small, as a part of our Server Management Service.

Let’s take a look at how our Support Team help a customer  deal with this plesk error.

How to resolve BIO_new_file: certificate not found error in Plesk?

Plesk is a commercial web hosting and server data center automation software with a control panel developed for Linux and Windows-based retail hosting service providers.

Typically, nginx or Apache fails to start with the following error:

Nginx:

BIO_new_file(“/usr/local/psa/var/certificates/cert-rWXDy2“) failed (SSL: error:02001002:system library:fopen:No such file or directory:fopen(‘/usr/local/psa/var/certificates/cert-rWXDy2‘,’r’) error:2006D080:BIO routines:BIO_new_file:no such file) nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test failed

Apache:

AH00526: Syntax error on line 51 of /etc/httpd/conf/plesk.conf.d/vhosts/example.com.conf:
SSLCertificateFile: file ‘/opt/psa/var/certificates/cert-rWXDy2’ does not exist or is empty

Or the same errors are displayed upon the attempt to create a subscription.

Usually, issue occurs by leftover configuration of the removed domain.

The certificate file from the error can find in different configuration files.

grep -rl cert-rWXDy2 /var/www/vhosts/system/ | sort | uniq
/var/www/vhosts/system/example.com/conf/httpd.conf
/var/www/vhosts/system/example.com/conf/nginx.conf

Today, let us see the steps followed by our Support techs to resolve it.

1. Firstly, connect to the server via SSH.

2. Then, locate the configuration files that mention the certificate:

grep -r cert-rWXDy2 /var/www/vhosts/system/*

/var/www/vhosts/system/example.com/conf/httpd.conf: SSLCertificateFile /usr/local/psa/var/certificates/cert-rWXDy2
/var/www/vhosts/system/example.com/conf/nginx.conf: ssl_certificate /usr/local/psa/var/certificates/cert-rWXDy2;

3. Remove them:

rm -f /var/www/vhosts/system/example.com/conf/nginx.conf

rm -f /var/www/vhosts/system/example.com/conf/httpd.conf

4. Then, remove the symlink for the config file:

rm -f /etc/httpd/conf/plesk.conf.d/vhosts/example.com.conf
# rm -f /etc/nginx/plesk.conf.d/vhosts/example.com.conf

5. If the same error happens again, find and change the extension of the leftover config files:

find /etc/httpd/ /etc/nginx/ -name *example.com*.conf -print0 | xargs –null -I{} mv {} {}_leftover

6. Finally, vverify the operation with:

find /etc/httpd/ /etc/nginx/ -name *example.com*
/etc/httpd/conf/plesk.conf.d/webmails/example.com_webmail.conf_leftover
/etc/httpd/conf/plesk.conf.d/vhosts/example.com.conf_leftover
/etc/nginx/plesk.conf.d/webmails/example.com_webmail.conf_leftover
/etc/nginx/plesk.conf.d/vhosts/example.com.conf_leftover

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Conclusion

Today, we saw steps followed by our Support Engineers to resolve certificate not found error in Plesk.