To forcefully renew a Let’s Encrypt certificate, you will need to use the certbot command-line tool.
The basic command to renew a certificate is:
sudo certbot renew
This command will check all installed certificates and renew them if they are about to expire.
To forcefully renew a specific certificate, you can use the --force-renewal or --renew-by-default flag:
sudo certbot renew --force-renewal
or
sudo certbot renew --renew-by-default
You can also use --cert-name to specify which cert you want to renew:
sudo certbot renew --cert-name example.com
It’s also good to check your web server configuration after renewing the certificate, because sometimes a renewed certificate may require additional configurations for your web server.
It’s important to note that Let’s Encrypt has a rate limiting policy, which means that you can only renew a certificate so many times in a given period. So it is recommended to check the certificate expiration date before renewing it.