How to transfer SSL certificates from one vps to another?

Question

Nginx

Transferred by stupid copying from one VPS to another - nginx picked up everything and everything works - exactly until the moment they (certificates) are valid and until the moment I run certbot renew - it gives a bunch of errors, something about symlinks, etc.
And on the last VPS - yet it was not extinguished because it was paid for - the same settings and configs work, but not on the new one.
I've been racking my brains for a week now and this way and that - nothing happens, please tell me what I'm doing wrong?
PS OS Ubuntu 18/04, Nginx 1/14, Certbot 0.31

Answer 1

Well, it seems that the symlinks in the certbot directory structure were screwed up during the transfer (apparently, they were transferred by a crooked archiver that does not know how to do them). Archive with tar -cz, or don't archive at all, and copy the folder via ssh.
This is an assumption, of course. To figure it out, we need the errors that certbot issues.
And in the end, you can just get certificates again, they don’t cost money.

Answer 2

The /etc/letsencrypt directory needs to be migrated correctly.
Check that the paths to certificates in nginx.conf and other configs do not differ from the old ones.
As already said - check that all symlinks in /etc/letsencrypt are working.