This will be forth article in the series of articles about Mac OS X Server 10.5 setup under VMWare.
I would leave FileMaker Server installation for another time. Right now I want to talk about following services on the server which will replace existing server. Here is the situation, just a reminder:
I have live server which hosts websites and FileMaker databases. It also runs AFP services for access to files internally and FTP service for external developers access to those files. Our registration websites are secure websites with proper CA signed certificates. This server, once virtualization project is complete, would become host server, which will not have any services running, well maybe AFP, and will have VMware hosting guest machines. One machine would be new server with registration websites and FileMaker databases with same FTP and AFP services running as well. My challenge is to swap services of current server with new virtual server with least impact, as those registration websites are live 365 days a year and updating every now and then.
So, I’ve setup bare 10.5.7 server, called it promorphius and it would become twin of prometheus, our existing server. Next steps would include:
Setup web server.
First I moved all files from prometheus web server folder to promorphius. I set up site under web service in Server Admin with exact same settings as existing, except for folder location, it’s on separate virtual drive. I then need to make sure that this site is secured and all HTTP requests are going to HTTPS.
As I already have signed certificate on prometheus, I would request Reissue of the certificate from our CA. Follow links provided by your provider to the step where they ask you for CSR (Certificate Signing Request). On that page you would have text field for the CSR. On the new server, I’ve created new certificate with same information as on existing server, but it becomes Self Signed. No worries, Save and select this certificate and click on little gear icon in Server Admin, choose “Generate Certificate Signing Request (CSR)… ” and window with instruction would appear. Select image of certificate and drag it over text box on the CA’s website. It will be filled with some gibberish, that’s exactly what we need. Follow all neccesary remaining steps. Once you get your certificate select that text copy and select your Self Signed certificate from Server Admin and under little gear icon choose “Add Signed or Renewed Certificate from Certificate Authority…” paste the text in this area now. That’s it, your certificate is signed now!
Next in web server setup, we want to choose our newely signed certificate for our secure server. Under Web service, in Server Admin, choose Sites, select your site (remember, it suppose to use port 443) and under Security check box next to “Enable Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)” and select your signed certificate.
Now, we want to make sure that all requests to our HTTP forward to HTTPS. For that we would duplicate our web site, select port 80 instead of 443 and deselect SSL checkbox in security. We now need to do a little hack to setup these forwarding. Open Terminal, type in su type in root password, type in cd /private/etc/apache2/sites do ls to view your files, you will see some files like 0016_195.75.175.184_443_secure.example.com.conf type in pico 0002_10.1.1.11_443_secure.example.com.conf using your own file name. This will open basic text browser. Scroll down to area with:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} ^TRACE
RewriteRule .* - [F]
Edit this section to include:
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ https://secure.example.com/$1 [R]
And either delete or comment out existing lines.
So final would look like this:
RewriteEngine On
##RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} ^TRACE
##RewriteRule .* - [F]
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ https://secure.example.com/$1 [R]
$1 would insure that if somebody types in http://secure.example.com/sub/page.php they would be redirected to same subpage but HTTPS.
Now it’s time to check our server. Since we don’t want to change DNS settings for our domain as it will take up to 24hrs to propogate, we would use exisiting settings and swap IP addresses of old-real and new-virtual servers (you mapped both external and internal interfaces of your hardware to VMware, right? Instructions) Test your site, and everything should stay the same.
I’ve had issues with error messages on my php pages:
Warning: session_start() [function.session-start]: Cannot send session cache limiter – headers already sent
The reason for that is session_start() function in php file. Make sure it is at the very first line of the file.
