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This article provides a process to configure secure browsing (HTTPS) to the Uptime web interface over SSL. The steps are guaranteed to work with version 7.3 and later.
Configuring SSL
To configure SSL browsing in the Uptime web interface, you must generate a server certificate, which identifies that server is using SSL for security, and perform some platform-specific configuration. The following steps will cover this process.
Generate or obtain a server certificate
You can purchase a recognized certificate from a vendor such as Verisign or Thawte.
Alternately, you can generate your own non-recognized certificate. A non-recognized certificate is one that does not come from a certificate-issuing authority. To generate a non-recognized certificate, download and install the OpenSSL software. OpenSSL binaries for Windows can be obtained from Shining Light Productions.
Once OpenSSL is installed, enter the following commands (changing <openssl_dir> to the proper path for the OpenSSL installation directory) at the command line to generate the certificate key.
cd <openssl_dir>/bin openssl req -new -x509 -newkey rsa:4096 -nodes -out uptime_ssl_server.crt -keyout uptime_ssl_server.key
Move the files to the Uptime Infrastructure Monitor directory
Copy the following files to the <uptime_dir>/apache/conf directory where <uptime_dir> is the installation directory of Uptime (the default installation directory is C:\Program Files\uptime software\uptime on Windows and /usr/local/uptime on Linux).
- uptime_ssl_server.key
- uptime_ssl_server.crt
Update httpd.conf
The following changes to the web server configuration file (httpd.conf) will allow it to use SSL.
Open <uptime_dir>/apache/conf/httpd.conf for editing. Where <uptime_dir> appears below, change it to reflect the directory where you have Uptime installed (ex. c:/Program Files/uptime software/uptime). All path slashes in httpd.conf need to be forward slashes (rather than the usual backslash that is used in Windows).
To make browsing to the Uptime UI easy for users, have it listen on the default Uptime UI port, 9999, as well as the typical HTTP and HTTPS ports, 80 and 443.
Above the line "Listen 9999", add the following two lines:
Listen 80 Listen 443
To handle requests on each of these ports, 80, 443, and 9999, and redirect (actually rewrite) them properly, we will leverage the mod_rewrite.so module, so we need to enable it. In the httpd.conf file, uncomment the following line.
LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so
Finally, the last part is to add entries in httpd.conf that will rewrite the requests as HTTPS. At the bottom of the httpd.conf file, add these lines, changing <uptime_dir> to the directory of your Uptime installation. Please note that the following example uses a specific list of ciphers. You can change the list of ciphers according to your security requirements.
SSLProtocol ALL -SSLv2 -SSLv3 -TLSv1 -TLSv1.1
SSLCipherSuite ALL:!aNULL:!eNULL:!EXP:!DES:!RC4:!MD5:!PSK:!aECDH:!KRB5:!EDH-DSS-DES-CBC3-SHA:!EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA
SSLSessionCache none
<VirtualHost *:80>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} !^443$
RewriteRule ^/(.*) https://%{SERVER_NAME}/$1 [NC,R,L]
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:443>
SSLEngine on
DocumentRoot "<uptime_dir>/GUI"
SSLCertificateFile "<uptime_dir>/apache/conf/uptime_ssl_server.crt"
SSLCertificateKeyFile "<uptime_dir>/apache/conf/uptime_ssl_server.key"
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:9999>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} !^443$
RewriteRule ^/(.*) https://%{SERVER_NAME}/$1 [NC,R,L]
</VirtualHost>
Update uptime.conf
Open the <uptime_dir>/uptime.conf file for editing and change the httpContext parameter (which begins with "httpContext=http://") to reflect the use of SSL:
httpContext=https://<Server_Hostname>:443
Restart the services
For the changes to take effect, restart the Uptime Data Collector and Uptime Web Server on Windows or uptime_core and uptime_httpd on Linux.
Starting (or restarting) and Stopping Uptime Infrastructure Monitor