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SSL installation problem

J

Joelee

Guest
Hi I have just bought a SSL certificate from RapidSSL. When I was installing it from control panel of Plesk, it has below problem:

unable to set the private key: probably the private key format is invalid.

Is the private key the one I used to create the csr file please?

Any response would be highly appreciated.

Thank you in advance.
 
Hi I have found the solution: the problem relates to my private key being encrypted with a passphrase.
 
Solution for this

It took me a long time to find the solution to this problem, and here it is for anyone else who comes upon it.

Rather than having to generate a key with Plesk and order another SSL, you can do the following:

1) Remove the encrypted password from the key:

Remove the encryption from the RSA private key (while keeping a backup copy of the original file):

$ cp server.key server.key.org
$ openssl rsa -in server.key.org -out server.key

Make sure the server.key file is only readable by root:

$ chmod 400 server.key

Then just import in to Plesk! I found these directions at http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/ssl/ssl_faq.html#removepassphrase for reference.

Or, if you really want the encrypted password, then you can copy the https section out of the httpd.include in /conf for your virtual host. Then disable SSL for the domain, and create a new file: /etc/httpd/conf/yourdomain.conf and paste in the info you copied before. Cut out everything except what is between <ifmodule mod_ssl> and </ifmodule> (should be quite large).

Change the key to point to wherever you put the key and cert (usually /etc/httpd/conf/ssl.key and ssl.crt). Then in httpd.conf (before the line: include /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.include) put in: include /etc/httpd/conf/yourvhost.conf.

Reboot Apache and it will prompt you for your security password!

I really dislike the latter way of doing it, as it is quite messy, but it is indeed more secure if you require it.

You will have to change the paths I included here to match your distro of course!

Jordan
 
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