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Get SSL running on Apache (CentOS)

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I was playing with a new virtual server that had CentOS installed on it recently, and wanted to get SSL working for Apache.  Since I was only setting up a development server I really didn’t need to purchase a certificate and decided to use a self-signed certificate.  Here is what I did:

First I needed to get ‘make’ and ‘mod_ssl’ running to allow for this. (I use sudo but you could login as su)

sudo yum install make
sudo yum install mod_ssl

Next I did the following steps:

  1. Go to /etc/pki/tls/certs
  2. Run the command sudo make mycert.pem
  3. Enter the information you are prompted for about country, state, city, host name etc, your certificate and key has been created
  4. Now edit /etc/httpd/conf.d/ssl.conf and update the following items:
    • SSLCACertificateFile /etc/pki/tls/certs/mycert.pem
    • SSLCACertificateKeyFile /etc/pki/tls/mycert.pem
  5. I was forced to create a symbolic link for the SSLCACertificateKeyFile as follows: (I think this was supposed to happen automagically.)
    • I went to /etc/pki/tls and created the symbolic link using the next line.
    • sudo ln -s certs/mycert.pem mycert.pem
  6. Restart Apache (/etc/init.d/httpd restart)

There, now you have a self-signed certificate for your apache virtualhosts.

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