We went through LAMP stack installation on Ubuntu Server. Now we will enable https by installing mod_ssl and creating self-signed certificate.

Before we begin

As a prerequisite, you should have Apache2 installed and firewall configured for port 443. I already went through that.

I have web server on address http://192.168.60.3

If I try to reach it on https://192.168.60.3 this is what I get

Enable mod_ssl

mod_ssl is apache module which enables ssl/https.

We need to enable it

sudo a2enmod ssl

As last sentence suggest, we should restart apache2

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Create SSL Certificate

Following command will create self signed certificate with public and private key named ssl1. Cet will be valid for 1 year (365 days)

sudo openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout /etc/ssl/private/ssl1.key -out /etc/ssl/certs/ssl1.crt

Country Name (2 letter code) [XX]:HR
State or Province Name (full name) []:YourState
Locality Name (eg, city) [Default City]:YourCity 
Organization Name (eg, company) [Default Company Ltd]:YourCompany
Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:YourDept
Common Name (eg, your name or your server's hostname) []:your_domain_or_ip
Email Address []:email@domain.xxx

!!! For this test in common name I entered my IP address – in that field in production system you will put domain name of your web.

In my case that would be informaticar.net

Configure Apache to use SSL

We need to create new config file in /etc/apache2/sites-available to enable ssl to work.

Enter following

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/your_domain_or_ip.conf

I will enter 192.168.60.3.conf for a name.

Enter following into your conf file

<VirtualHost *:443>
   ServerName your_domain_or_ip
   DocumentRoot /var/www/your_domain_or_ip

   SSLEngine on
   SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl/certs/ssl1.crt
   SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/private/ssl1.key
</VirtualHost>

As you can see from the screenshot, under server name I also specified 192.168.60.3 since I also generated cert with 192.168.60.3.

Under document root, you will enter location of your website files. For this tutorial I used /var/www/html which has in it default apache2 webpage.

We will now enable our configuration by entering

sudo a2ensite your_domain_or_ip.conf

Then we will test it by entering

sudo apache2ctl configtest

You can see the results of the success in the screenshot below. AH00558 message is ok, you can ignore it. Output Syntax OK is signal that we need.

We also need to reboot our apache2 webserver

sudo systemctl reload apache2

We will now test our website again by entering

https://192.168.60.3

We can also see certificate details. Website uses cert we created earlier.

HTTP to HTTPS redirection

As a bonus step, we will redirect HTTP traffic to HTTPS.

We will edit 192.168.60.3.conf file we created above in this guide.

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/your_domain_or_ip.conf

At the bottom of the file we will create another block with following

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName your_domain_or_ip
    Redirect / https://your_domain_or_ip/
</VirtualHost>

This is how my config file looks like:

We will again test our config and reboot apache2

sudo apachectl configtest
sudo systemctl reload apache2

After I entered http://192.168.60.3 I was automagically transfered to https://192.168.60.3

That is it, we now secured our web server with HTTPS.

Disclaimer