Enabling SSL on Ubuntu and the problem thereafter.

Recently I had to test our product on secured site, so I tried to install SSL on localhost. The config file for SSL site has been installed in /etc/apache2/sites-available. So I simply had to enable it and modify it. I first issued this to enable the SSL module:

sudo a2enmod ssl

And then I enabled the SSL config by:

sudo a2ensite default-ssl

After the above command is issued, a symlink to /etc/apache2/sites-available/default-ssl will be created and called /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/default-ssl. I edited it and uncommented the following lines:

SSLEngine on

SSLCertificateFile /home/ISA.REALOBJECTS/firman/Documents/ssl/linuxdev8.nc.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile /home/ISA.REALOBJECTS/firman/Documents/ssl/linuxdev8.nc.key

The certificate (.crt file) and the key (.key file)  are snakeoil, so to say, I created them using OpenSSL. The commands I used to create them are the following:

openssl genrsa -des3 -out linuxdev8.nc.key 1024
openssl req -new -key linuxdev8.nc.key -x509 -out linuxdev8.nc.crt

After that, I restarted Apache, at which point I was asked to input the key phrase:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

And lo and behold, I can now connect to http://127.0.0.1 and https://127.0.0.1

The problem happens after Ubuntu is restarted. Apache refuses to start, and throws up the following error message instead:

Starting httpd: (98)Address already in use: make_sock: could not bind to address 0.0.0.0:80
no listening sockets available, shutting down
Unable to open logs!

I googled for 3 days and tried all of the solutions I found, but my problem persisted. I have no clue what went wrong! I'm not a wizard when it comes to Apache directives but I guess there's something wrong somewhere in the config file. What I found to be a pseudo-solution was this:

Before restarting Ubuntu, disable the SSL site first by issuing this:

sudo a2dissite default-ssl

And then proceed to restarting Ubuntu. After computer is restarted, re-enable the SSL site and restart Apache:

sudo a2ensite default-ssl
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

That's it :)

BTW in case you wanna know my config files, the following are my /etc/apache2/ports.conf, /etc/apache2/sites-available/default, and /etc/apache2/sites-available/default-ssl, in that order:


NameVirtualHost *:80
Listen 80


    # SSL name based virtual hosts are not yet supported, therefore no
    # NameVirtualHost statement here
    Listen 443




ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost

DocumentRoot /var/www

Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None


Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
allow from all


ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/

AllowOverride None
Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
Order allow,deny
Allow from all


ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log

# Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
# alert, emerg.
LogLevel warn

CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined

    Alias /doc/ "/usr/share/doc/"
    
        Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None
        Order deny,allow
        Deny from all
        Allow from 127.0.0.0/255.0.0.0 ::1/128
  






ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost

DocumentRoot /var/www

Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None


Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
allow from all


ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/

AllowOverride None
Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
Order allow,deny
Allow from all


ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log

# Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
# alert, emerg.
LogLevel warn

CustomLog /var/log/apache2/ssl_access.log combined

Alias /doc/ "/usr/share/doc/"

Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
Allow from 127.0.0.0/255.0.0.0 ::1/128


#   SSL Engine Switch:
#   Enable/Disable SSL for this virtual host.
SSLEngine on

#   A self-signed (snakeoil) certificate can be created by installing
#   the ssl-cert package. See
#   /usr/share/doc/apache2.2-common/README.Debian.gz for more info.
#   If both key and certificate are stored in the same file, only the
#   SSLCertificateFile directive is needed.
SSLCertificateFile    /home/ISA.REALOBJECTS/firman/Documents/ssl/linuxdev8.isa.nc.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile /home/ISA.REALOBJECTS/firman/Documents/ssl/linuxdev8.isa.nc.key

#   Server Certificate Chain:
#   Point SSLCertificateChainFile at a file containing the
#   concatenation of PEM encoded CA certificates which form the
#   certificate chain for the server certificate. Alternatively
#   the referenced file can be the same as SSLCertificateFile
#   when the CA certificates are directly appended to the server
#   certificate for convinience.
#SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/apache2/ssl.crt/server-ca.crt

#   Certificate Authority (CA):
#   Set the CA certificate verification path where to find CA
#   certificates for client authentication or alternatively one
#   huge file containing all of them (file must be PEM encoded)
#   Note: Inside SSLCACertificatePath you need hash symlinks
#         to point to the certificate files. Use the provided
#         Makefile to update the hash symlinks after changes.
#SSLCACertificatePath /etc/ssl/certs/
#SSLCACertificateFile /etc/apache2/ssl.crt/ca-bundle.crt

#   Certificate Revocation Lists (CRL):
#   Set the CA revocation path where to find CA CRLs for client
#   authentication or alternatively one huge file containing all
#   of them (file must be PEM encoded)
#   Note: Inside SSLCARevocationPath you need hash symlinks
#         to point to the certificate files. Use the provided
#         Makefile to update the hash symlinks after changes.
#SSLCARevocationPath /etc/apache2/ssl.crl/
#SSLCARevocationFile /etc/apache2/ssl.crl/ca-bundle.crl

#   Client Authentication (Type):
#   Client certificate verification type and depth.  Types are
#   none, optional, require and optional_no_ca.  Depth is a
#   number which specifies how deeply to verify the certificate
#   issuer chain before deciding the certificate is not valid.
#SSLVerifyClient require
#SSLVerifyDepth  10

#   Access Control:
#   With SSLRequire you can do per-directory access control based
#   on arbitrary complex boolean expressions containing server
#   variable checks and other lookup directives.  The syntax is a
#   mixture between C and Perl.  See the mod_ssl documentation
#   for more details.
#
#SSLRequire (    %{SSL_CIPHER} !~ m/^(EXP|NULL)/ \
#            and %{SSL_CLIENT_S_DN_O} eq "Snake Oil, Ltd." \
#            and %{SSL_CLIENT_S_DN_OU} in {"Staff", "CA", "Dev"} \
#            and %{TIME_WDAY} >= 1 and %{TIME_WDAY} <= 5 \
#            and %{TIME_HOUR} >= 8 and %{TIME_HOUR} <= 20       ) \
#           or %{REMOTE_ADDR} =~ m/^192\.76\.162\.[0-9]+$/
#

#   SSL Engine Options:
#   Set various options for the SSL engine.
#   o FakeBasicAuth:
#     Translate the client X.509 into a Basic Authorisation.  This means that
#     the standard Auth/DBMAuth methods can be used for access control.  The
#     user name is the `one line' version of the client's X.509 certificate.
#     Note that no password is obtained from the user. Every entry in the user
#     file needs this password: `xxj31ZMTZzkVA'.
#   o ExportCertData:
#     This exports two additional environment variables: SSL_CLIENT_CERT and
#     SSL_SERVER_CERT. These contain the PEM-encoded certificates of the
#     server (always existing) and the client (only existing when client
#     authentication is used). This can be used to import the certificates
#     into CGI scripts.
#   o StdEnvVars:
#     This exports the standard SSL/TLS related `SSL_*' environment variables.
#     Per default this exportation is switched off for performance reasons,
#     because the extraction step is an expensive operation and is usually
#     useless for serving static content. So one usually enables the
#     exportation for CGI and SSI requests only.
#   o StrictRequire:
#     This denies access when "SSLRequireSSL" or "SSLRequire" applied even
#     under a "Satisfy any" situation, i.e. when it applies access is denied
#     and no other module can change it.
#   o OptRenegotiate:
#     This enables optimized SSL connection renegotiation handling when SSL
#     directives are used in per-directory context.
#SSLOptions +FakeBasicAuth +ExportCertData +StrictRequire

SSLOptions +StdEnvVars


SSLOptions +StdEnvVars


#   SSL Protocol Adjustments:
#   The safe and default but still SSL/TLS standard compliant shutdown
#   approach is that mod_ssl sends the close notify alert but doesn't wait for
#   the close notify alert from client. When you need a different shutdown
#   approach you can use one of the following variables:
#   o ssl-unclean-shutdown:
#     This forces an unclean shutdown when the connection is closed, i.e. no
#     SSL close notify alert is send or allowed to received.  This violates
#     the SSL/TLS standard but is needed for some brain-dead browsers. Use
#     this when you receive I/O errors because of the standard approach where
#     mod_ssl sends the close notify alert.
#   o ssl-accurate-shutdown:
#     This forces an accurate shutdown when the connection is closed, i.e. a
#     SSL close notify alert is send and mod_ssl waits for the close notify
#     alert of the client. This is 100% SSL/TLS standard compliant, but in
#     practice often causes hanging connections with brain-dead browsers. Use
#     this only for browsers where you know that their SSL implementation
#     works correctly.
#   Notice: Most problems of broken clients are also related to the HTTP
#   keep-alive facility, so you usually additionally want to disable
#   keep-alive for those clients, too. Use variable "nokeepalive" for this.
#   Similarly, one has to force some clients to use HTTP/1.0 to workaround
#   their broken HTTP/1.1 implementation. Use variables "downgrade-1.0" and
#   "force-response-1.0" for this.
BrowserMatch ".*MSIE.*" \
nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown \
downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0