For all those who want to test their website on localhost using the secure HTTP protocol, here is how you can configure apache for testing purpose. I did this on Mac OSX 10.6 using apache 2.2
Guidelines provided at apple [
^] are for older version. We'll use them to generate the certificate and then configure apache for newer version.
> mkdir ~/keys
> cd ~/keys
> openssl genrsa -des3 -out server.key 1024
Remember the passphrase you provide here. It will be required in next steps.
> openssl req -new -key server.key -out server.csr
Answers to all questions are straight-forward, except for Common Name: you need to provide 127.0.0.1 (i.e. server name)
> openssl genrsa -des3 -out ca.key 1024
For simplicity, keep the passphrase same as used above
> openssl req -new -x509 -days 365 -key ca.key -out ca.crt
This again asks same Questions as in step 4, but this time for Common Name you can provide any dummy name
Find sign.sh file if you have mod_ssl package downloaded, or else retrieve it from pkg.contrib folder from latest version of package. Copy the sign.sh to "keys" folder and make it executable
>chmod +x sign.sh
>./sign.sh server.csr
Say yes ("y") to the 2 questions
>sudo mkdir /etc/apache2/ssl.key
>sudo cp -r * /etc/apache2/ssl.key/
>cd /etc/apache2/ssl.key/
>sudo cp server.key server.key.original
>sudo openssl rsa -in server.key.original -out server.key
>sudo apachectl stop
>sudo vim /etc/apache2/httpd.conf
* You may want to make a backup before editing this
- Locate and comment out Port directive to listening on 80
*Note - Commenting this line will force to use only https, leave it as is if you want to use both.
- Locate and uncomment the LoadModule ssl_module libexec/apache2/mod_ssl.so
- sudo vim /etc/apache2/extra/httpd-ssl.conf
* Again make a backup before editing
- Change ServerName from www.example.com to 127.0.0.1
- Provide your email id for ServerAdmin
- Under SSLCertification, provide path to our own ssl certificate i.e. SSLCertificateFile "/private/etc/apache2/ssl.key/server.crt"
- Also, set ServerKey with: SSLCertificateKeyFile "/private/etc/apache2/ssl.key/server.key"
- You may also set the other paths as per requirement
> sudo httpd -D SSL
> sudo apachectl start
And you now have https://127.0.0.1 running
