09 December 2013, 22:26

Hi everyone

I'm new to mahara and it's great to be here. I am going to be using mahara to integrate with Moodle but I am having some issues and hope someone can point the newbie in the right direction. I have installed mahara on an aws ec2 instance using turnkey's one click install. Problem 1: When I go into my mahara admin page I get an untrusted ssl cert warning. If I ignore it and then try to set up networking I get problem 2: 

"The environment where Mahara is running is misconfigured and this is causing problems. You probably need to contact a server administrator to get this fixed. Details, if any, follow:

Could not generate a new SSL key. Are you sure that both openssl and the PHP module for openssl are installed on this machine?"

Just to warn you I am no computer genius. I learn by following instructions and looking on google etc (I know, I'm sorry ;) ) I would be really grateful to anyone who can help me with this or point me at a straight forward "how to" Thank you

Si

12 December 2013, 15:09

Having no joy finding a solution to this so if anyone has had the same experience and resolved it I would be grateful to know what you did. Running a linux instance btw. Thanks

12 December 2013, 16:12

As a first responce I would send the error report to the Hosting people and suggest they have a problem.

"The environment where Mahara is running is misconfigured and this is causing problems. You probably need to contact a server administrator to get this fixed. Details, if any, follow:

Could not generate a new SSL key. Are you sure that both openssl and the PHP module for openssl are installed on this machine?"

Basicaly Mahara is saying it can not find the OpenSSL or that the PhP module that interacts with OpenSSL is missing.

Thats not your fault or problem it;s the host provider that need to get it together.

John

12 December 2013, 16:13

Hi Si,

The first thing to check is to answer the question in that error message: Are you sure that both openssl and the PHP module for openssl are installed on your web server?

The easiest way to check if the PHP openssl module is installed is to use the phpinfo() function. Put a .php file up on your server with this as its contents:

<?php
phpinfo();

... and then access it in your web browser. The output will be a series of tables describing your installed version of PHP and all its modules. If the PHP openssl module is installed, you should see a section titled "openssl" (on my local machine it comes alphabetically between mysqli and pcre).

If it's not installed, normally you'd use your server's package management system (such as "apt-get" or "yum") to install it, although I don't know whether you may need to do something different because you're on AWS. Typically asking your package management system to install the PHP openssl module will also make it install openssl itself, as a dependency.

Cheers,

Aaron

12 December 2013, 16:15

Whoops, I didn't notice John's response coming in right before mine!

Like he said, depending on your hosting situation, you may be able to just ask your hosting provider to just install the PHP openssl module for you.

12 December 2013, 22:53

Aaron and John
Thank you so much for taking the time to help. I really appreciate it. The answer to the first question is yes. All of the required installs are there (at least they appear in the file structure if i look at it in  filezilla or webmin) whether they are configured correctly is another matter!!!

I will try your suggestion for double checking that Aaron. Perhaps I just need to reload them?

John: Mahara is installed on an EC2 instance using a turnkey package. I am the AWS admin... :/  ;)

12 December 2013, 23:51

If for some reason the OpenSSL and or the PhP module where added after the initial install, try restarting/reloading the webserver.

After adding or removing any PhP module you always need to restart the webserver.

13 December 2013, 1:12

Thanks John

No later additions and no mods since install but I gave it a go anyway. No luck I'm afraid.

For the record I'm pretty new to using opensource software seriously. I'm getting in deep with moodle and enjoying it. Looking forward to digging in to Mahara once I have this resolved. I'm hugely impressed with the opensource community. Everyone is incredibley helpful and generous with their skills and knowledge. I appreciate the kind intention and the patience of all involved. Very cool!

Si

13 December 2013, 14:02

Well we are going to have to dig a little deeper.

I assume you have root access to the server :)  From your work station you need to ssh into the server, the reason I suggest ssh is that uses openssl and if there is a system wide problem you will find it using ssh.

Auuuminf you have access to either su and can become root or sudo same thing with some restrictions.  You need to find the path to openssl.

So having su'd or sudo you need to issue the command whereis openssl

it will return the path to the binary and with some luck the config file for openssl.

You should get something like  /usr/sbin/openssl   and /etc/ssl/openssl,conf

There are two possibilities,

1 openssl is not where PhP expects it to be or is hard configured in Mahars and is wrong

2 The openssl.config file is missing

If your ssh session give an error or simply wont work include any info on that as well.

John

13 December 2013, 16:04

Does openssl show up in your phpinfo() output? It should look something like this: