Access HDA over SSL

	WARNING
	This is recommended only for advanced users, proceed with caution.

Here I will discuss accessing your Amahi HDA over SSL. This means that you will go to your home page http://hda and it will automatically convert to https://hda.

Why is this recommended?

Currently you access your Amahi HDA control panel unsecured. This means that anyone sniffing your network can get the password to your HDA. If your password is compromised then this means they can log in to possibly modify your shares or even access SSH (if you have it enabled). So I recommend anyone using SSH to at least have SSL access to their Amahi HDA.

Sag47 00:38, 15 June 2011 (PDT)

NOTE: This may interfere with Hosting a Website tutorial.

Prerequisites

I assume you already have Fedora 14 installed with Amahi up and running.

Instructions

Back up apache configurations

Before doing anything be sure to back up your apache configurations!

(cd /etc/httpd/ && tar -czf apache-backup.tar.gz conf.d/)

This way if you accidentally screw something up we can start over.

Install mod_ssl

Fedora: mod_ssl for Apache2 is required for this functionality. Luckily Fedora makes it easy.

yum -y install mod_ssl

Ubuntu: Not needed, should already be installed. If not:

sudo a2enmod ssl

Generate your own certificates

NOTE: Leaving defaults will not make your server less secure. Make sure that you change "asecretpassword" in the commands below to something else. Otherwise any commands which don't have "asecretpassword" in it can be copied and pasted. This has to do with the challenge password for the private key. If you don't understand what I mean then you should read about public-key cryptography which is essentially what SSL uses.

mkdir /etc/httpd/ssl.crt

openssl genrsa -des3 -passout pass:asecretpassword -out /etc/httpd/ssl.crt/server.key.org 1024

openssl req -new -passin pass:asecretpassword -passout pass:asecretpassword -key /etc/httpd/ssl.crt/server.key.org -out /etc/httpd/ssl.crt/server.csr -days 3650

openssl req -x509 -passin pass:asecretpassword -passout pass:asecretpassword -key /etc/httpd/ssl.crt/server.key.org -in /etc/httpd/ssl.crt/server.csr -out /etc/httpd/ssl.crt/server.crt -days 3650

openssl rsa -passin pass:asecretpassword -in /etc/httpd/ssl.crt/server.key.org -out /etc/httpd/ssl.crt/server.key

mkdir /etc/httpd/ssl.key

mv /etc/httpd/ssl.crt/server.key /etc/httpd/ssl.key/server.key

chmod 400 /etc/httpd/ssl.key/server.key

Modify apache initialization

Modify the apache initialization for allowing SSL virtual hosts. Just in case you decide you want more than one virtual host to be capable of SSL.

bash code
​'"`UNIQ--pre-00000004-QINU`"'​

Create your HDA SSL virtual host

Now you need your HDA virtual host over SSL. The default configuration is pretty good so let's use that.

bash code
​'"`UNIQ--pre-00000006-QINU`"'​

You need to modify 01-platform-ssl.conf and replace the line with "<VirtualHost *:80>" to the following lines...

Text
​ '"`UNIQ--pre-00000008-QINU`"' ​

Leave the rest of the file intact as you found it. This way the server utilizes the SSL certificates you created for yourself.

Create a redirect from HDA to secured HDA

Modify /etc/httpd/conf.d/01-platform.conf and go down to the rewrite rules. Below the last rewrite rule just before the line "# this was only for FCGI" put the following code.

Text
​ '"`UNIQ--pre-0000000A-QINU`"' ​

Restart the Apache2 server

Restart your server to apply the changes you've made. If you did everything right you shouldn't receive any warnings when restarting the server.

bash code
​service httpd restart​

Finished

Now that you're done go ahead and visit http://hda and watch it turn into https://hda! Understand that the certificates you generated have not been verified by a certificate authority so you'll need to confirm a security exception.

Troubleshooting

Apache error

If you get an error when you restart Apache (httpd) about a bad configuration then it is probably because you directly copied and pasted from this wiki. When you copy the code then sometimes a null character is also copied which is hidden to most text editors.

A way to solve this is to delete and retype the first an last character of each line which Apache is complaining about. You can then test your configuration again.

bash code
​'"`UNIQ--pre-0000000D-QINU`"'​

If all goes well and you get "Syntax OK" then you can start your Apache server again.

bash code
​'"`UNIQ--pre-0000000F-QINU`"'​

If all things end badly and you can't figure it out then it is possible to restart this tutorial from scratch. Just start it over.

How do I start over?

Run the following command sequence.

bash code
​ '"`UNIQ--pre-00000011-QINU`"' ​

Then you can start the instructions again from step one.

See also

Secure App Access
Access Joomla over HTTPS