From: Janne Johansson Subject: Re: acme-client(1): add support for let's encrypt iPAddress certificates To: Lloyd Cc: Stuart Henderson , Peter Hessler , "tech@openbsd.org" Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2025 08:28:31 +0100 > One other thought, I intermittently ran into this whilst testing: > > acme-client: https://acme-staging-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/acme/authz/foo/bar: bad HTTP: 503 > acme-client: transfer buffer: [{"type": "urn:ietf:params:acme:error:rateLimited", "detail": "Service busy; retry later."}] (90 bytes) > acme-client: bad exit: netproc(58848): 1 > > This was not due to any abuse or explicit rate-limiting; rather, it was > random, likely overload on their end. It got me thinking acme-client will > return 1 on any error. However a 503 could be interpreted as "try again > later". A once-daily cron job to update certificates would simply fail > due to an overload. If we were able to return more granular error values > to the caller, a decision could be made to say, retry in a few minutes > rather than abort (as opposed to a more serious error like a 403). Then again, if LE is getting hammered with requests, then having all of the worlds clients come back within minutes is probably not going to help a lot either. -- May the most significant bit of your life be positive.