How to install SSL on Apache2 for Ubuntu 14.04?

October 17, 2014 17.7k views
edwinlimantara
By:
edwinlimantara

I have purchased my certificate from Namecheap, and they gave me .crt and .ca-bundle

I've followed this tutorial:
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-create-a-ssl-certificate-on-apache-for-ubuntu-14-04

But it doesn't work, does anyone know why I still can't access https://mydomain.com?

At this point, I've gone through so many tutorials from DigitalOcean whether needed or not because the tech support always give me a tutorial link without knowing what my actual problem is.

Some of the modification I've made were from these tutorials:
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/initial-server-setup-with-ubuntu-14-04https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-create-a-ssl-certificate-on-apache-for-ubuntu-14-04
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-apache-with-a-free-signed-ssl-certificate-on-a-vps

7 comments
  • edwinlimantara October 17, 2014

    the SAVE QUESTION button can't be clicked.... can't edit my question. Anyway just wanted to add:
    At this point, I've made many modifications to my files following the tutorials from DigitalOcean. There are some more modifications I made that were actually for Ubuntu 12.04. So, my files could be corrupted and I did not keep track of what changes I had made

  • sierracircle October 17, 2014

    Maybe post a few things:

    your website.conf
    your domain you are trying to get working
    where do you have the crt and ca bundle stored

    It is probably just simple config setting somewhere, but difficult to tell without more information.

  • edwinlimantara October 17, 2014

    Hi,

    the domain I'm trying to get working is limantara.me
    I store limantara.me.ca-bundle, limantara.me.key, limantara.me.csr, and limantara.me.crt in /etc/apache2/ssl/

    Here's the current limantara.me.conf that is stored in /etc/apache2/sites-available :

    <VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin admin@limantara.me
        ServerName limantara.me
        ServerAlias www.limantara.me
    DocumentRoot /var/www/limantara.me/public_html

    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
  • sierracircle October 18, 2014

    Looks like you got it working.

  • edwinlimantara October 18, 2014

    Yup, I eventually did

  • asb MOD October 20, 2014

    It would be great if you could share your own solution. I'm sure it would help the next person that has the same problem.

  • edwinlimantara October 20, 2014

    The error was just because the .key file mismatched the .csr I used to activate the SSL certificate. I finally knew what's wrong after reading the Apache error log file.

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1 Answer
jtr October 20, 2014

The most common hang-up is configuration for and installation of the file containing the CA bundle, if your cert provider requires one (most of the cheaper ones do).

In most of my VirtualHost config sections I have something like:

    SSLEngine on
    SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/private/somehostname.com.key
    SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl/certs/www_somehostname_com.crt
    SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/ssl/certs/somehostname.com.ca-bundle

In some of the comments on the DO tutorial you referenced you'll see some discussion about this.

Generally though, the best place to look, after setting up the basics of SSL on your server, is to check the documentation provided by your specific cert provider. This will factor in whether they use a CA bundle or not and the naming scheme they use for the files. If you buy your cert through a reseller, check your order details (to get the actual type/company behind it) and then their knowledge base. They will generally link to the appropriate install instructions as long as you know your web server type (e.g. Apache + mod_ssl)

https://support.comodo.com/index.php?/Default/Knowledgebase/Article/View/637/37/certificate-installation-apache--mod_ssl

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