Troubleshooting Secure Sockets Layer problems

Edit online

A Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is required only to perform resource manager configuration. If you are having problems importing or retrieving documents, you can conclude SSL is not the cause. If you are trying to access the resource manager from the system administration client, and you receive an error, SSL might have problems.

About this task

You must create a self-signed certificate and configure the Web server for use with SSL. Also, if you are using IBM® WebSphere® Application Server Advanced Edition, you must add *.443 as a virtual host alias (using the WebSphere administrative console).

You can use your Web browser to test the SSL configuration at various points in the system. Ensure that your resource manager is operating properly by either importing or retrieving a document. Then, perform the following verification steps:

Procedure

  1. Open a Web browser and go to https://hostname, where hostname is the host name of your Web server.
    After accepting the self-signed certificate that you created during the SSL configuration, the IBM HTTP server welcome page should display. If you instead get an error message, check the IBM HTTP server log file named error.log for SSL-related error messages. The log file is located, by default, in c:\IBM HTTP Server\logs, or in /opt/IBM HTTP Server/logs.
    Tip: When you work with SSL, never specify local host as the host name. SSL requires that you use a valid system host name.
  2. After verifying the SSL connection between the client and HTTP server, you validate the SSL connection between the client and WebSphere Application Server.
    Open a Web browser and go to https://hostname:port/icmrm/snoop. If you are using WebSphere as your SSL type, the port number is typically 9444. If this fails, check the WebSphere Application Server log files that are located in C:\Program Files\WebSphere\AppServer\logs.
  3. You can identify the port number that is being used by WebSphere Application Server from the WebSphere administrative console by clicking your node and then Application Servers > icmrm.
    In the text pane, the configuration information is displayed by clicking Web ContainerHTTP Transport.
  4. Verify that the SSL connection is working when it is communicating from the client through the Web server to WebSphere Application Server.
    Open a browser and entering https://hostname/icmrm/snoop. If this action fails, check the IBM HTTP Server logs that are located in the c:\IBM HTTP Server\logs directory.