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Accepted
Nathan J.B.
Asked: 2012-04-17 16:32:09 +0800 CST

Is there a modern and clear tutorial on setting up SSL for localhost / testing use?

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Let's say I'm developing a script for login.example.com. I have absolutely no access to login.example.com, but that page loads a script on assets.example.com (which I have access to). To test how well my new script works on the production login page, I changed my /etc/hosts to point assets.example.com to my localhost (and set up Apache accordingly).

The only problem now is that the login page loads https://assets.example.com/script.js (Again, I have no influence on this!). So in order for me to test my script, I need to set up a self-signed SSL cert.

I followed the directions here: https://help.ubuntu.com/11.10/serverguide/C/certificates-and-security.html

I also tried using the default-ssl to test it to no avail. I simply constantly get SSL connection error: 

// Error 107 (net::ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR): SSL protocol error. (Chrome)

Thanks!

Update: Since we're now at 12.04 LTS && 12.10, the tutorial should address these versions.

ssl 12.04 openssl 12.10

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    At least on Ubuntu 12.10, it's crazy simple now.

    sudo a2ensite default-ssl && sudo a2enmod ssl && sudo service apache2 restart

    That's all.

    Try it:

    • http:// localhost
    • https:// localhost (I can't link these due to restrictions.)
    • Try also with a custom domain (point anything at 127.0.0.1, like https://example.com, via /etc/hosts)

    The command spits out a readme file, but it's not really necessary.

    Note: It's expected to get a cautionary message from the browser when accessing since it's a self-signed certificate.

    PS: This assumes a normal and fresh-enough install the LAMP stack via tasksel install lamp-server

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