Table of Contents

IRC Self-Signed Certificate Errors

IRC clients show TLS certificate verification errors.

Symptom

IRC clients show TLS certificate verification errors. Error: “certificate is valid for ergo.test, localhost, not irc-direct.folk.zone”. Clients require manual certificate acceptance.

Cause

Ergo IRCd is using self-signed certificates instead of Let's Encrypt certificates.

Fix

Copy Let's Encrypt certificates from Caddy to Ergo.

Steps:

1. Copy certificates from Caddy container to IRC directory:

```bash mkdir -p ~/folkzone-new/irc/certs docker cp folkzone-caddy:/data/caddy/certificates/acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org-directory/irc-direct.folk.zone/irc-direct.folk.zone.crt ~/folkzone-new/irc/certs/fullchain.pem docker cp folkzone-caddy:/data/caddy/certificates/acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org-directory/irc-direct.folk.zone/irc-direct.folk.zone.key ~/folkzone-new/irc/certs/privkey.pem ```

2. Mount certificates in docker-compose.yml:

```yaml folkzone-irc-ergo:

volumes:
  - folkzone_irc_ergo_data:/ircd
  - ./irc/ircd.motd:/ircd/ircd.motd:ro
  - ./irc/certs/fullchain.pem:/ircd/fullchain.pem:ro
  - ./irc/certs/privkey.pem:/ircd/privkey.pem:ro
environment:
  ERGO__SERVER__NAME: irc.folk.zone
  ERGO__NETWORK__NAME: folk.zone

```

3. Restart IRC server:

```bash docker compose up -d folkzone-irc-ergo ```

Prevention

Use Let's Encrypt certificates from the start. Certbot automatically handles renewal.

See Also

Last updated: 2026-06-21