> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://nginxle.onepub.dev/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://nginxle.onepub.dev/cli-commands/acquire.md).

# acquire

The acquire command allows you to acquire a certificate.

The acquire command is mainly used by the nginx-le team, you should normally configure nginx-le to auto acquire certificates.

Possible usages:

* you have had to revoke a certificate and need to force a new certificate to be acquired. In this case use the `nginx-le revoke` command followed by then `nginx-le acquire` command.
* an error occurred during auto acquisition and acquisitions have been blocked by nginx-le for 15 minutes. Running `nginx-le acquire` clears the block flag.

To acquire a certificate use `nginx-le acquire` command:

e.g.

`nginx-le acquire`

Note: The `acquire` command can take upto 5 minutes + to acquire a certificate due to delays in DNS propagation but is normally much quicker.

If you have rolled your own Docker or docker-compose configuration then you can still use the cli tools if you first run `nginx-le config`.

If you can't use the Nginx-LE cli tools then you can still use the 'in-container' tools.

To manually run the internal acquire command first attached to the Nginx-LE container and then run `acquire`.

```
nginx-le cli
acquire
```

Once you have run `acquire` Nginx-LE will automatically renew certificates.


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