Dummy's Guide to SSL server?

Help!
1

It seems that I can change a regular server to handle https by changing

    http_server([port(Opts.port),
                 workers(5)]).

to

    http_server([port(Opts.port),
                 ssl([certificate_file('cacert.pem'),
                 key_file('privkey.pem')]),
                 workers(5)]).

but I couldn’t find information on how to create those two files.

So, I tried this:

openssl genrsa -out privkey.pem
openssl req -new -x509 -key privkey.pem -out cacert.pem -days 1095

but https://localhost:9999 failed (plain http works fine).

Is there a cookbook for how to create the certificates?

Here’s what I saw on the server:

% Started server at https://localhost:9999/
1 ?- 
% [Thread httpd@9999_2] First line: \0\0üL•ëhl¯ª£¶!C^úô?>>Sµ¼4g¾1Í 0–ÔçZ¢OkA‰€`nÛàÅè)ëù­BUà<\0"ÊÊÀ+À/À,À0̨̩ÀÀ\0œ\0\0/\05\0
2

(That should have been https://localhost:9999 of course – I’ve edited the original)

3

Since the topic of using SSL, which requires certificates, with a localhost comes up often and this is the topic that is most easily found with the keywords SSL and localhost adding this FYI here.

Found this YouTube video that seems to have a reasonable solution to the problem of using HTTP servers running on localhost and using SSL. Have not tried this but next time I need it should be able to find it here.

Quick and Easy SSL Certificates for Your Homelab!

4

Additional openssl config (easiest is to use a config file) is needed, to specify e.g. subjectAltName (which browsers require).

This looks reasonable at a glance: