Skip to main content

SSL Certificate Warning

(2014-01-20)

Problem

Email:

################# SSL Certificate Warning ################

  Certificate for hostname 'computer.domain', in file (or by nickname):
     /etc/pki/tls/certs/localhost.crt

  The certificate needs to be renewed; this can be done
  using the 'genkey' program.

  Browsers will not be able to correctly connect to this
  web site using SSL until the certificate is renewed.

 ##########################################################
                                  Generated by certwatch(1)

Solution

Run these commands and fill out the prompts accordingly (or let the defaults blank):

# openssl req -new -days 365 -x509 -nodes -newkey rsa:2048 -out /etc/pki/tls/certs/server.crt -keyout /etc/pki/tls/private/server.key
# chmod 600 /etc/pki/tls/certs/server.crt
# chmod 600 /etc/pki/tls/private/server.key
# systemctl restart httpd

Commentary

If you ignore this message, and let the cert expire, nothing bad will happen immediately (presuming of course your users are already ignoring the "warnings" about the self-signed cert or you are not using SSL at all). However the next time httpd is bounced (manually, yum updates, or a system reboot) httpd won't start and the error message it gives you will be obscure.

Back to top