Apache Cookbook, 2nd Edition

2.7. Installing mod_ssl

Problem

You want to add SSL support to your Apache server with the mod_ssl secure HTTP module.

Solution

Windows

There is a discussion of installing SSL on Windows in Recipe 7.2, but the short form is, you should get XAMPP from ApacheFriends.org, unless you are very experienced with building source code on the Microsoft Windows platform.

Apache 2.0

mod_ssl is included with 2.0, although it is not automatically compiled nor installed when you build from source. You need to include the --enable-ssl option on your ./configure line, and enable it with LoadModule and AddModule directives.

Apache 1.3

To install mod_ssl on a Unixish system, download the tarball package from the http://www.modssl.org Web site and unpack it. Then:

% cd mod_ssl-2.8.14-1.3.27
% ./configure \
>    --with-apache=../apache_1.3.27 \
>    --with-ssl=SYSTEM \
>    --prefix=/usr/local/apache
% cd ../apache_1.3.27
% make
%make certificate

Discussion

The mod_ssl package requires source-level changes to the base Apache code, and so the version of the mod_ssl package you install must match the version of the Apache distribution you have. If your Apache installation doesn’t include the source, such as if you installed a binary-only RPM or other vendor distribution, you won’t be able to add mod_ssl to it.

In addition to the Apache source, mod_ssl requires that you have Perl and the OpenSSL libraries installed. The --with-ssl option on the build configuration statement indicates where this is located; if it is in a ...