Accessing apache on a vagrant sandbox using ssl (port forwarding)

Question

I've built a vagrant/virtualbox web server as a development sandbox, and configured apache in the VM for ssl (on the default port 443, with a self-signed certificate). I've tested pages on the VM itself using curl

curl -v -k https://mysite.mydomain.com/testSearch/results?postcode=WN8+0BA

and it seems to work quite happily, so I'm satisfied that apache is correctly configured and working in the VM.

However, when I try to access the VM from my host's browsers over https, I'm unable to do so.

I've added

config.vm.forward_port "https", 443, 8443

to my vagrantfile, but trying to access the url

https://mysite.mydomain.com:8443/testSearch/results?postcode=WN8+0BA

simply can't display the page I've tried with several different browsers: IE gives a meaningless "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage"; Chrome gives

SSL connection error
Unable to make a secure connection to the server. This may be a problem with the server or it may be requiring a client authentication certificate that you don't have.
Error 107 (net::ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR): SSL protocol error.

Firefox gives me

An error occurred during a connection to mysite.mydomain.com:8443.
SSL received a record that exceeded the maximum permissible length.
(Error code: ssl_error_rx_record_too_long)

but even the Firebug Net tab doesn't tell me anything more than that.

I'm not getting anything in the access or error logs on the VM apache, so I suspect that vagrant isn't forwarding the ssl at all.

• VM Guest OS: centos56x64
• Host: Windows 7 64-bit
• JRuby: 1.6.3 (ruby-1.8.7-p330) (2011-07-07 965162f) (Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM 1.6.0_24) [Windows 7-amd64-java]
• Vagrant: 0.7.8
• VirtualBox: 4.0.12

Any assistance would be gratefully accepted.

Solution

1) Configure the file Vagrantfile

Vagrant::Config.run do |config|
    config.vm.box = "lucid32"
    config.vm.network "33.33.33.10"
    config.vm.forward_port "http", 80, 8080
end

2) Access your VM "lucid32"

vagrant ssh

3) Inside your VM, configure the Apache "Virtual Host":

<VirtualHost 33.33.33.10:80>
    ServerName        your-domain.dev
    DocumentRoot    /vagrant
    DirectoryIndex    index.php index.html index.htm

    <Directory /vagrant>
        AllowOverride All
        Allow from All
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost 33.33.33.10:443>
    ServerName        your-domain.dev
    DocumentRoot    /vagrant
    DirectoryIndex    index.php index.html index.htm

    <Directory /vagrant>
        AllowOverride All
        Allow from All
    </Directory>

    SSLEngine on
    SSLCertificateFile /path/to/certicate/apache.pem
</VirtualHost>

4) Exit VM and configure the file "hosts" in your host machine:

33.33.33.10    your-domain.dev

Comments

[Martin de Keijzer]

When using this solution you have to do steps 2 and 3 over and over again when you destroy the Vagrant box. Using a provisioning (bash) script, Chef or Puppet will make this task a lot less repetitive.

[Morgan Delaney]

For googlers, I had to specify both a SSLCertificateFile to a .crt file and a SSLCertificateKeyFile to a .key file.