Setting up SSL: Ubuntu and Apache 2
This document requires that you've got a signed server.crt and a server.key file available. You may have just
gone through my page
Creating Certificate Authorities and self-signed SSL certificates.
If not, go there first and follow the instructions.
The remaining steps involve Apache and other tweaks detailed step-by-step below. This file was originally
written for Ubuntu 6.06, but has been kept current and verified with 8.04 Hardy Heron. It should work with
most/all releases in between -- and probably Debian-based distros in general, with little or no modification.
If you have a registered DNS name, be sure that you properly set it up. On the Gnome console:
System->Administration->Networking:General. Your host/domain name here should match the one you'll
be using in later steps. You can also edit /etc/hosts directly if you're comfortable with that route.
If you haven't done so already, use apt-get, Synaptic or some other tool to
get and install Apache 2. I prefer apache2-mpm-prefork. You should also have openssl by this point.
This step suggests putting certificate-related files in this location: /etc/apache2/ssl. If the
"ssl" directory doesn't already exist there, go ahead and mkdir it now.
Then copy the server.key and server.crt files into position:
cp server.key /etc/apache2/ssl
cp server.crt /etc/apache2/ssl
You'll want to run the /usr/sbin/a2enmod script. If you look at this script, it's simply a
general purpose utility to establish a symlink between a module in
/etc/apache2/mods-available to /etc/apache2/mods-enabled (or give a message to the
effect that a given module doesn't exist or that it's already symlinked for loading).
a2enmod ssl
The first command copies the default configuration file for port 80, to use it as a stub
configuration file for 443. The second command establishes a symlink from the 'available'
ssl file to the 'enabled' file. The symlinking methodology between those two directories is similar
in philosophy to mods-available and mods-enabled (previous step). The general idea is that enabled
files exist as symlinks created to their available counterparts.
cp /etc/apache2/sites-available/default /etc/apache2/sites-available/ssl
ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/ssl /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/ssl
The default location for HTML pages with an initial install of Ubuntu is
/var/www and there exists no separate place for ssl files. I prefer to
serve up basic HTML pages in /var/www/html and SSL pages in /var/www-ssl/html.
Whatever works for you. But at this point I create the directories.
cd /var/www
mkdir html
cd /var
mkdir www-ssl
cd www-ssl
mkdir html
su to the superuser and make a backup of the original Apache configuration file.
Call it whatever you want. My practice is to add "_original" to any default configuration
file before I make changes -- in case I need to revert. You should not make a backup of the following
file in the sites-enabled directory, since both the original and backup will be loaded when you restart
Apache. Also note that a symlink exists from /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default to
/etc/apache2/sites-available/default. Back it up in the sites-available directory or some other location outside
of Apache altogether.
sudo su
cd /etc/apache2/sites-available
cp /etc/apache2/sites-available/default default_original
Now you need to declare the IP of your box (or FQDN/DNS name) and document roots you created in a previous step.
To configure HTTP over port 80 (edit /etc/apache2/sites-available/default):
NameVirtualHost *:80
(Note: Look down just a bit and make a change to the virtual host settings.)
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName localhost
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/
(Note: Use your assigned IP or DNS name followed with ":80" if you have one for ServerName).
Similar procedure for HTTPS over port 443 (edit /etc/apache2/sites-available/ssl):
NameVirtualHost *:443
(Note: Look down just a bit and make a change to the virtual host settings.)
<VirtualHost *:443>
ServerName localhost
DocumentRoot /var/www-ssl/html/
(Note: Again, use your assigned IP or a DNS name followed with ":443" if you have one for ServerName.)
Go to this file /etc/apache2/ports.conf and add the following to it:
Listen 443
I noted that starting with Ubuntu 7.10 (or thereabouts), the ports.conf may already have an IfModule clause in it for the
SSL portion. If you see this, you can just leave it as-is:
<IfModule mod_ssl.c>
Listen 443
</IfModule>
For example, in the middle of /etc/apache2/sites-available/ssl file, after the commented area
which says "# Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit..."
add the following.
SSLEngine On
SSLCertificateFile /etc/apache2/ssl/server.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/apache2/ssl/server.key
When starting and stopping Apache there may be a complaint such as "Could not determine the server's fully qualified
domain name, using 127.0.1.1 for ServerName". You may encounter this if you don't have a DNS name for your server, and
are just using an IP. If this applies to you, go into your /etc/hosts file and make the following changes.
Basically, we'll be adding "localhost.localdomain" to the 127.0.0.1 IP and whatever system name you chose when you
installed Ubuntu (assuming you've not changed it). The final line below should be there if you have a static IP, and
corresponding DNS name registered to it. If this is the case, earlier steps that wanted ServerName should have a value
which corresponds to the DNS name also indicated here.
127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain {your system name}
127.0.1.1 {your system name}
{static IP if you you have one} {fully qualified DNS host name if you have one}
It may be that I first noticed additional behavior with Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron. If
you don't have a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) for your box, you may need to make
an additional tweak. In your /etc/apache2/apache2.conf file, you may want to add the following
line at the very end of the file if Apache is still complaining about lacking a fully
qualified domain name at startup:
ServerName localhost
Restart Apache.
cd /etc/init.d
./apache2 restart
Done -- test it out!
Sources
Ubuntu discussion forum (not quite complete)
Creating Certificate Authorities and self-signed SSL certificates (command-line openssl procedures)