Access HDA over SSL
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.
NOTE: Following this guidance is at your own risk and could break your HDA. This has been tested with Amahi 10, Fedora 25.
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). Updates and clarifications spaceman 15:23, 27 March 2017 (BST). Tamorgen 09:15, 31 Oct 2018 (EST). Made changes for Subject Alternative Name.
NOTE: This may interfere with Hosting a Website tutorial.
Prerequisites
I assume you already have Fedora 25 installed with Amahi up and running.
Instructions
All commands must be run as root user.
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
mod_ssl for Apache2 is required for this functionality. Luckily Fedora makes it easy.
dnf -y install mod_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.
As of Chrome version 58, the Chrome browser requires SSL certificates to use SAN (Subject Alternative Name) and has removed Common Name (CN). Using a CN will produce an error within the Security Overview section of the certificate, telling the user that the SAN is missing. A new method of creating the certificate is required.
1. Change directory to /etc/httpd/, and switch users
cd /etc/httpd/ sudo -s
2. Create a new file createselfsignedcertificate.sh using vi, nano, or your favorite text editor.
#!/usr/bin/env bash mkdir ~/ssl/ openssl genrsa -des3 -out ~/ssl/rootCA.key 2048 openssl req -x509 -new -nodes -key ~/ssl/rootCA.key -sha256 -days 1024 -out ~/ssl/rootCA.pem
3. Now create another file createselfsignedcertificate.sh:
#!/usr/bin/env bash mkdir /etc/httpd/ssl.crt mkdir /etc/httpd/ssl.key sudo openssl req -new -sha256 -nodes -out /etc/httpd/ssl.crt/server.csr -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout /etc/httpd/ssl.crt/server.key -config <( cat /etc/httpd/server.csr.cnf ) sudo openssl x509 -req -in /etc/httpd/ssl.crt/server.csr -CA ~/ssl/rootCA.pem -CAkey ~/ssl/rootCA.key -CAcreateserial -out /etc/httpd/ssl.crt/server.crt -days 3650 -sha256 -extfile v3.ext </n
4. Create the configuration file server.csr.snf.
[req] default_bits = 2048 prompt = no default_md = sha256 distinguished_name = dn [dn] C=US ST=Maryland L=Anapolis O=Home Administrator OU=HDA Domain emailAddress=your-address@your-domain.com CN = localhost
5. Now, create a file called v3.ext for the x509 v3 certificate
authorityKeyIdentifier=keyid,issuer basicConstraints=CA:FALSE keyUsage = digitalSignature, nonRepudiation, keyEncipherment, dataEncipherment subjectAltName = @alt_names [alt_names] DNS.1 = localhost DNS.2 = hda DNS.3 = hda.yourdomain DNS.4 = cockpit.yourdomain
6. Now it's time to create your certificates. Run createRootCA.sh. Follow the prompts
bash ./createRootCA.sh
Then createselfsignedcertificate.sh
bash ./createselfsignedcertificate.sh
7. Copy your newly created server.key to the ssl.key directory.
cp /etc/httpd/ssl.crt/server.key /etc/httpd/ssl.key/server.key chmod 400 /etc/httpd/ssl.key/server.key
8. Copy your rootCA.pem certificate to a network share, so you may import it to your favorite browser, to eliminate the untrusted certificate warning.
cd ~/ssl/ cp rootCA.pem /var/hda/files/docs/.
9. Import rootCA into your browser. For Chrome, Settings --> Advanced --> Manage Certificates --> Authorities --> Import. Select your root certificate from a locally accessible resource, either directly from, or after copying it from your share.
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. (NOTE: NameVirtualHost has no effect and will be removed in the next release /etc/httpd/conf.d/00-init.conf:1; this section can be ommited).
(cd /etc/httpd/conf.d/ && echo 'NameVirtualHost *:443' >> ./00-init.conf)
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.
cd /etc/httpd/conf.d/ cp 01-platform.conf 01-platform-ssl.conf
You need to modify 01-platform-ssl.conf
<nowiki>nano 01-platfrom-ssl.conf
...replace the line "<VirtualHost *:80>" with the following lines...
<VirtualHost *:443> SSLEngine on SSLCipherSuite ALL:!ADH:!EXPORT56:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:+LOW:+SSLv2:+EXP:+eNULL SSLCertificateFile /etc/httpd/ssl.crt/server.crt SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/httpd/ssl.key/server.key
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
nano 01-platform.conf
Below the last rewrite rule, just above the <location /> section, add:
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteRule ^(.*) https://%{SERVER_NAME}$1 [R,L]
This will automatically redirect requests from http://hda ((http://192.168.1.10) to https://hda (https://192.168.1.10)...
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.
systemctl restart httpd
Bonus
Fedora 27/Amahi 11 now supports Cockpit, a powerful browser-based server administration portal. To eliminate the SSL warning on this page, you need to create a .cert file using files previously created in this walkthrough. The .cert file consists of the contents of the server.crt and server.key. To create the file, run the following commands. This will automatically place the file in the correct directory.
cat /etc/httpd/ssl.crt/server.crt > /etc/cockpit/ws-certs.d/01-self-signed.cert cat /etc/httpd/ssl.crt/server.key >> /etc/cockpit/ws-certs.d/01-self-signed.cert
Finished
Now that you're done go ahead and visit http://hda and watch it turn into https://hda!
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.
service httpd configtest
If all goes well and you get "Syntax OK" then you can start your Apache server again.
systemctl restart httpd
is acceptable and will work.
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.
dnf -y erase mod_ssl rm -rf /etc/httpd/ssl.crt rm -rf /etc/httpd/ssl.key (cd /etc/httpd/conf.d/ && rm -f *-ssl.conf) (cd /etc/httpd/ && tar -xzf apache-backup.tar.gz) systemctl restart httpd
Then you can start the instructions again from step one.
