Type of certificate

If access to PhixFlow is only intended for people in your organisation, you may wish to create a self-signed certificate. This still provides a secure connection, but this will generate security warnings when users first connect, and they will not see a padlock in the address bar of their browser. If this is not acceptable to your users or by your company policy, or if you are going to provide access to people outside your organisation, you should obtain your certificate from a certificate authority (CA).

A list of certificate authorities is given on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_authority.

Overview

All installations process will contain the steps:

Obtain a certificate - whether self-signed or from a certificate authority
Create a keystore
Tell tomcat where to find the keystore

Quick start for HTTPS access to PhixFlow

Two example installations are given here: a self-signed certificate on linux, and a self-signed certificate on windows. There are the two commonest platforms for PhixFlow, and the instructions are provided to help you set PhixFlow up quickly to operate securely over with HTTPS.

These quick start instructions will allow you to connect to PhixFlow over an HTTPS connection, but there are other security implications when setting up a production system using certificates - in particular, whether you use a certificate from a certificate authority. Therefore, you may need to check this set up against your company security policies. Consult the standard tomcat documentation for full details of alternative methods of installation.

The examples use a Java tool called keytool, so you must have Java installed to follow these.

Obtain certificate and create keystore

Using the Java tool keytool you can create a self-signed certificate and a keystore in one step.

Windows

"%JAVA_HOME%\bin\keytool" -genkey -alias tomcat -keyalg RSA -keystore pathToKeystoreFile

E.g.

"%JAVA_HOME%\bin\keytool" -genkey -alias tomcat -keyalg RSA -keystore C:\app\secure\keystore

Linux

 $JAVA_HOME/bin/keytool -genkey -alias tomcat -keyalg RSA -keystore pathToKeystoreFile

E.g.

 $JAVA_HOME/bin/keytool -genkey -alias tomcat -keyalg RSA -keystore /opt/secure/keystore

To complete the command:

Enter a keystore password when prompted - keystorePasswd
Enter data about your company, contact name, etc - this information will be displayed when users access PhixFlow
Select the default option not to set a separate password for the private key; if you want to do this, consult the tomcat documentation for further details.

Edit the tomcat configuration file

Edit the tomcat configuration file $TOMCAT/conf/server.xml as follows.

Find the connector specification like:

<!-- Define a SSL/TLS HTTP/1.1 Connector on port 8443         This connector uses the NIO implementation that requires the JSSE
         style configuration. When using the APR/native implementation, the
         OpenSSL style configuration is required as described in the APR/native
         documentation -->
    <!--
    <Connector port="8443" protocol="org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11NioProtocol"
               maxThreads="150" SSLEnabled="true" scheme="https" secure="true"
               clientAuth="false" sslProtocol="TLS" />
    -->

and update it to:

 <!-- Define a SSL/TLS HTTP/1.1 Connector on port 8443         This connector uses the NIO implementation that requires the JSSE
         style configuration. When using the APR/native implementation, the
         OpenSSL style configuration is required as described in the APR/native
         documentation -->
    <Connector port="8443" protocol="org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11NioProtocol"
               maxThreads="150" SSLEnabled="true" scheme="https" secure="true"
               keystoreFile="pathToKeystoreFile" keystorePass="keystorePasswd"
               clientAuth="false" sslProtocol="TLS" />

E.g.

 <!-- Define a SSL/TLS HTTP/1.1 Connector on port 8443         This connector uses the NIO implementation that requires the JSSE
         style configuration. When using the APR/native implementation, the
         OpenSSL style configuration is required as described in the APR/native
         documentation -->
    <Connector port="8443" protocol="org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11NioProtocol"
               maxThreads="150" SSLEnabled="true" scheme="https" secure="true"
               keystoreFile="C:\app\secure\keystore" keystorePass="Hjq43823LfgreN"
               clientAuth="false" sslProtocol="TLS" />

Restart tomcat. PhixFlow will now be available at

https://localhost:8443/phixflow

Remove standard HTTP access

Edit the tomcat configuration file $TOMCAT/conf/server.xml to comment out the standard connection.

Update the connection like:

    <Connector port="8081" protocol="HTTP/1.1"
               connectionTimeout="20000"
               redirectPort="8443" />

to

    <!--
         <Connector port="8081" protocol="HTTP/1.1"
               connectionTimeout="20000"
               redirectPort="8443" />
    -->

Configure tomcat for HTTPS

Type of certificate

Overview

Quick start for HTTPS access to PhixFlow

Obtain certificate and create keystore

Edit the tomcat configuration file

Remove standard HTTP access