How to install a ssl certificate for tomcat server on a aws linux machine

Question

I have a single AWS ec2 instance without a load balancer. I have apache tomcat server running on the same. How should i install a ssl certificate on the server for the website that i am hosting on the server? I am running a java struts 2 application running on the server. All the options online are about using ACM with load balancer.

Answer 1

For Tomcat8 I would do the following:

• Copy your .p12 to /usr/java/latest/

• Add the following to your server.xml file, ensuring the keystoreFile matches the above step and keystorePass corresponds to the cert

 <Connector port="8443" protocol="org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11NioProtocol" maxThreads="150" SSLEnabled="true" scheme="https" secure="true" clientAuth="false" sslProtocol="TLSv1.2" keystoreFile="/usr/java/latest/<your.p12>" keystorePass="<add passwd here>" keystoreType="PKCS12" connectionTimeout="20000" redirectPort="8443" proxyPort="443" server="NunYa" proxyName="<fqdn>" /> 

• If you want to prevent unencrypted traffic, comment out block in server.xml starting with <Connector port="8080" protocol="HTTP/1.1"

For more details see the references below.

References

https://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-8.0-doc/ssl-howto.html

https://www.feistyduck.com/library/openssl-cookbook/online/ch-testing-with-openssl.html

http://www.robinhowlett.com/blog/2016/01/05/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-ssl-but-were-afraid-to-ask/

Answer 2

You can use ngnix server to route the default 443 port to your tomcat 8080 or 8443 port Amazon instance. For that you need to buy ssl or get free ssl for 3 month duration via " https://letsencrypt.org " websites. you can even configure ngnix by using openssl certificate if your going work as a demo purpose.