Configuring SSL

Getting SSL certificate

An SSL certificate is issued by a Certificate Authority (CA). Your internal IT/IS team might be able to help you with this. You might have to submit the basic information in the form of CSR (Certificate Signing Request). Refer this page to regenerate CSR: https://in.godaddy.com/help/generating-a-certificate-signing-request-csr-apache-2x-5269

Configure Apache

Once you have the SSL certificate, you can proceed to configure Apache:

1. Copy the certificate files to ${apache_home}/conf/CSR/

2. Open "${apache_home}/conf/httpd.conf" file 

3. Search for the "LoadModule ssl_module modules/mod_ssl.so"

   1. Remove any pound sign(#) at the start of the line (i.e. uncomment it)

   2. If this line is not found in the file, then it means SSL module is not installed. Please install this depending on the OS of the server

      For CentOS - yum install mod_ssl

4. Skip 5th step if you installed SSL module manually i.e (3.b)

5. Add below section at the end of the file httpd.conf file after replacing the dummy values with the real one. 

   Listen 443
   <VirtualHost *:443>
       DocumentRoot "D:\OpenSpecimen\Apache2.2\htdocs"
       ServerAdmin biobank@yourdomain.edu
       ServerName biobank.yourdomain.edu
       SSLEngine on
       SSLCertificateFile "D:\OpenSpecimen\Apache2.2\conf\CSR\biobank_cert.crt"
       SSLCertificateKeyFile "D:\OpenSpecimen\Apache2.2\conf\CSR\biobank.key"
   	RedirectMatch ^/$ /openspecimen
       ProxyPass /openspecimen ajp://localhost:8009/openspecimen
       ProxyPassReverse /openspecimen ajp://localhost:8009/openspecimen
   </VirtualHost>
    
   Note: Make sure that "SSLCertificateFile" and "SSLCertificateKeyFile" are properly located.

6. In case of the new SSL module installation (3b), edit /etc/httpd/conf.d/ssl.conf file and add below lines in <VirtualHost> tag.

   ServerAdmin biobank@yourdomain.edu
   ServerName biobank.yourdomain.edu
   SSLCertificateFile "D:\OpenSpecimen\Apache2.2\conf\CSR\biobank_cert.crt"
   SSLCertificateKeyFile "D:\OpenSpecimen\Apache2.2\conf\CSR\biobank.key"
   RedirectMatch ^/$ /openspecimen
   ProxyPass /openspecimen ajp://localhost:8009/openspecimen
   ProxyPassReverse /openspecimen ajp://localhost:8009/openspecimen
    
   Note: Remove existing entries for "SSLCertificateFile" and "SSLCertificateKeyFile" 
    Also make sure files are located at specified path.

Configuring Apache to prevent browser caching

How to configure Apache to set expires header?

This header allows an application to set a given period of time to live for web pages and other objects served from web pages. 

The idea is to inform web browsers how often they should reload objects from the server. This will save the bandwidth and server load because clients who follow the header will reload objects less frequently. For more details on Expires module, please refer: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_expires.html

1. Enable expires module: 
   The expires module is not compiled by default and must be enabled in the Apache. To enable the expires module please run the below command:

   sudo a2enmod mod_expires

   
   

2. Add the below directive in the <Virtual Host> section. 
   
   

   ExpiresActive On
   ExpiresDefault "access plus 3 hours"

   After updating the Virtual Host configuration will looks like below:

   <VirtualHost *:443>
       DocumentRoot "D:\OpenSpecimen\Apache2.2\htdocs"
       ServerAdmin biobank@yourdomain.edu
       ServerName biobank.yourdomain.edu
       
       ExpiresActive On
       ExpiresDefault "access plus 3 hours"
   
       SSLEngine on
       SSLCertificateFile "D:\OpenSpecimen\Apache2.2\conf\CSR\biobank_cert.crt"
       SSLCertificateKeyFile "D:\OpenSpecimen\Apache2.2\conf\CSR\biobank.key"
   	RedirectMatch ^/$ /openspecimen
       ProxyPass /openspecimen ajp://localhost:8009/openspecimen
       ProxyPassReverse /openspecimen ajp://localhost:8009/openspecimen
   </VirtualHost>