certbot: System does not fully support snapd: cannot mount squashfs

If you are getting this error when installing snapd and trying to run it on Linux, it’s likely because you are trying to do it on a virtual server (VPS). If this is the case, the server you are running on may be an OpenVZ or LXC container and not a real server, so you won’t be able to install snapd.

Unfortunately, if you are trying to use certbot, you won’t be able to do it through snapd. However, you can try installing it using pip (Python package installer).

Installing Certbot with PIP

First, we need to install Python. Choose the option that corresponds to the Linux operating system you have.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install python3 python3-venv libaugeas0

sudo dnf install python3 augeas-libs

Remove Certbot if you already had it installed

Set a Python Environment

sudo python3 -m venv /opt/certbot/
sudo /opt/certbot/bin/pip install --upgrade pip

We will install Certbot (this time using pip).

sudo /opt/certbot/bin/pip install certbot certbot-apache

We prepare the certbot command

sudo ln -s /opt/certbot/bin/certbot /usr/bin/certbot

Choose how you want to run Certbot.

Run the following command if you want to obtain a certificate and have Certbot automatically edit the Apache configuration to serve it, enabling HTTPS access in one step.

sudo certbot --apache

Or you can just obtain a certificate if you are more conservative, and make the necessary changes manually in future steps.

sudo certbot certonly --apache

Set up automatic renewal

Certbot documentation recommends running the following command, which will add a cron job to the default crontab.

echo "0 0,12 * * * root /opt/certbot/bin/python -c 'import random; import time; time.sleep(random.random() * 3600)' && sudo certbot renew -q" | sudo tee -a /etc/crontab > /dev/null

Confirm that your Certbot works

To confirm that your site is set up correctly, go to https://yoursite.com/ and make sure the padlock icon appears in the URL bar.

[Monthly] Upgrade Certbot

It’s important to occasionally upgrade your Certbot to keep it up to date. To do this, you can run the following command in the command line (Terminal).

sudo /opt/certbot/bin/pip install --upgrade certbot certbot-apache

If this step fails, you will need to run “sudo rm -rf /opt/certbot” and repeat all the installation instructions.