Ubuntu, Apache, VirtualHosts, and SSL – part 2

In my first post about Ubuntu, Apache, VirtualHosts, and SSL I covered generating self-signed certificates and implementing them for Apache VirtualHosts. What I didn’t cover was — if you implemented this without a correct base configuration — you’d end up with some unexpected results if you tried to visit your base domain over SSL.

It’s simple to resolve this. First, edit /etc/apache2/ports.conf and modify as follows:

  
  # If you add NameVirtualHost *:443 here, you will also have to change
  # the VirtualHost statement in /etc/apache2/sites-available/default-ssl
  # to 
  # Server Name Indication for SSL named virtual hosts is currently not
  # supported by MSIE on Windows XP.
+ NameVirtualHost *:443
  Listen 443

If you were reading closely, you know what to do next. Modify sites-available/default-ssl file and change the directive as follows:

Now, restart apache:

/etc/init.d/apache2 reload

Your base SSL domain will now display the expected DocumentRoot, but the certificate will contain the URL localhost.localdomain. To fix this run, as root:

make-ssl-cert generate-default-snakeoil --force-overwrite

— From /usr/share/doc/apache2.2-common/README.Debian.gz

If you install the ssl-cert package, a self-signed certificate will be
automatically created using the hostname currently configured on your computer.
You can recreate that certificate (e.g. after you have changed /etc/hosts or
DNS to give the correct hostname) as user root with:

make-ssl-cert generate-default-snakeoil –force-overwrite

—

Questions, comments, and feedback regarding this guide and welcome!

MikeBeach.org