Introduction:

There might be some old Helpdesk Pilot customers who have SSL enabled on their instance.

The steps involved in enabling SSL has changed over time. Initially, SSL was enabled by hand by modifying the Apache configuration file. With the introduction of the hdp-manage tool inside the virtual machine(VM), post Jan 2012, enabling SSL was possible via the hdp-manage command. 

Now, with the release of version 5.2.7 of Helpdesk Pilot, the web server now runs via a FCGI (Apache) process. This is an improvement on the old style Django server enabling better performance of the application. With this change, the apache files have to be re-written, to support FCGI. The SSL configuration done by hand in the older VMs, are not recognizable by the auto-updater which runs the update on your Helpdesk Pilot VM (in the process configuring the apache files, to support FCGI)

This article outlines the steps involved to reconfigure SSL on your Helpdesk Pilot instance, so that the update can proceed smoothly.

Instructions:

Inside the Helpdesk Pilot VM, the SSL files(certificate and key) are stored in /etc/apache2/ssl/hdp/. We will copy them out to some temporary location to install the certificate again.

1. Login as superuser (password: superuser)
2. Type sudo hdp-manage https disable
3. Now type cp /etc/apache2/ssl/hdp/ssl-cert.* /tmp/
4. To enable the certificate again, type sudo hdp-manage https enable --certFile /tmp/ssl-cert.pem --keyFile /tmp/ssl-cert.key [--caCertFile CA_CERT] (this last parameter --caCertFile is optional). If you don't have the Certificate Authority(CA) file, you can issue the command like, sudo hdp-manage https enable --certFile /tmp/ssl-cert.pem --keyFile /tmp/ssl-cert.key
5. To disable the old SSL configuration, you will have to do the following.
• cd /etc/apache2/sites-available/
• Look at the files present there by typing ls
• The older configuration file should be present there, with the name hdp-ssl
• Run this command sudo a2dissite hdp-ssl. This will disable the other configuration

This should enable SSL on your Helpdesk Pilot instance once again. Once this is done, you can proceed with the update of Helpdesk Pilot. Once you have updated Helpdesk Pilot to the latest version, the configuration should be set correctly with SSL enabled on your instance.