26

I'm running Ubuntu Server 12.04, and I want to enable SSL connections to MySQL.

I've generated the following keys/certs files with OpenSSL:

  • ca-cert.pem
  • server-cert.pem
  • server-key.pem

I stored these at /etc/mysql, then added added the following lines to /etc/mysql/my.cnf:

ssl-ca=/etc/mysql/ca-cert.pem
ssl-cert=/etc/mysql/server-cert.pem
ssl-key=/etc/mysql/server-key.pem

Next, I restarted the server with sudo service restart mysql.

However, this doesn't seem to enable SSL. Within a mysql session:

mysql> show variables like '%ssl%';
+---------------+----------------------------+
| Variable_name | Value                      |
+---------------+----------------------------+
| have_openssl  | DISABLED                   |
| have_ssl      | DISABLED                   |
| ssl_ca        | /etc/mysql/ca-cert.pem     |
| ssl_capath    |                            |
| ssl_cert      | /etc/mysql/server-cert.pem |
| ssl_cipher    |                            |
| ssl_key       | /etc/mysql/server-key.pem  |
+---------------+----------------------------+

Any ideas what I'm missing? Thanks

visitor93746
  • 361

7 Answers7

34

Ubuntu 12.04 comes with a OpenSSL 1.0.1, which has somewhat different defaults than the older OpenSSL 0.9.8 version.

Among other things, if you're using openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 to generate an RSA key, you'll end up with a key in a format called PKCS #8. Represented in the PEM format, these keys have the more generic -----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY----- header, which doesn't tell you what kind (RSA, DSA, EC) key it is.

Previously, with OpenSSL 0.9.8, keys were always in a format called PKCS #1, which represented as PEM, had the header -----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----.

Because of this you cannot simply change the header and footer from:

-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----

to

-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----`

It's not the same thing and it won't work. Instead you need to convert the key to the old format using openssl rsa. Like this:

openssl rsa -in key_in_pkcs1_or_pkcs8.pem -out key_in_pkcs1.pem

MySQL (v5.5.35) on Ubuntu 12.04 is using an SSL implementation called yaSSL (v2.2.2). It expect keys to be in the PKCS #1 format and doesn't support the PKCS #8 format used by OpenSSL 1.0 and newer. If you simply change the header and footer, as suggested by other posts in this thread, MySQL/yaSSL won't complain, but you'll be unable to connect and instead end up with an error like this:

ERROR 2026 (HY000): SSL connection error: protocol version mismatch

Ubuntu 14.04 comes with OpenSSL 1.0.1f and new settings. Among other things, it will generate certificates with SHA256 digests instead of SHA1, which was used in earlier versions. Incidentially, the yaSSL version bundled with MySQL doesn't support this either.

If you're generating certificates for use with MySQL, remember to make sure the RSA keys are converted to the traditional PKCS #1 PEM format and that certificates are using SHA1 digests.

Here's an example of how to generate your own CA, a server certificate and a client certificate.

# Generate a CA key and certificate with SHA1 digest
openssl genrsa 2048 > ca-key.pem
openssl req -sha1 -new -x509 -nodes -days 3650 -key ca-key.pem > ca-cert.pem

# Create server key and certficate with SHA1 digest, sign it and convert
# the RSA key from PKCS #8 (OpenSSL 1.0 and newer) to the old PKCS #1 format
openssl req -sha1 -newkey rsa:2048 -days 730 -nodes -keyout server-key.pem > server-req.pem
openssl x509 -sha1 -req -in server-req.pem -days 730  -CA ca-cert.pem -CAkey ca-key.pem -set_serial 01 > server-cert.pem
openssl rsa -in server-key.pem -out server-key.pem

# Create client key and certificate with SHA digest, sign it and convert
# the RSA key from PKCS #8 (OpenSSL 1.0 and newer) to the old PKCS #1 format
openssl req -sha1 -newkey rsa:2048 -days 730 -nodes -keyout client-key.pem > client-req.pem
openssl x509 -sha1 -req -in client-req.pem -days 730 -CA ca-cert.pem -CAkey ca-key.pem -set_serial 01 > client-cert.pem
openssl rsa -in client-key.pem -out client-key.pem
user262116
  • 441
4

This helped me:

The header and footer of the file server-key.pem looked like that:

-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----
...
...
-----END PRIVATE KEY-----

But it requires something like that:

-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
...
...
-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----

Note the BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY

In order to see the log:

sudo vim /var/log/mysql/error.log

Hope this helps.

Eric Carvalho
  • 55,453
user194410
  • 41
  • 2
3

I had the same troubles on 12.04 but it was in fact apparmor that caused the problems.

I found a solution at the Ubuntu Forums, moving .pem files in /etc/mysql resolved it.

You can also change the apparmor configuration in /etc/apparmor.d/usr.sbin.mysqld.

Luís de Sousa
  • 13,500
user273610
  • 31
1

Make sure that the user running the mysqld process has read access to the keys and certificate files. If you launch MySQL using the account "mysql", you would:

/etc/mysql$ chown mysql:mysql *.pem
/etc/mysql$ ls -l *.pem
-rwxrwx--- 1 mysql mysql 1631 2013-09-16 14:27 ca-cert.pem
-rwxrwx--- 1 mysql mysql 1281 2013-09-16 14:27 server-cert.pem
-rwxrwx--- 1 mysql mysql 1679 2013-09-16 14:27 server-key.pem

Otherwise, you might get the following in your error log:

SSL error: Unable to get certificate from '/etc/mysql/server-cert.pem'
130916 13:32:25 [Warning] Failed to setup SSL
130916 13:32:25 [Warning] SSL error: Unable to get certificate
Isabi
  • 11
  • 2
1

On Ubuntu 16.04, I ran mysql_ssl_rsa_setup, could see the files in show variables as in the question, but have_ssl and have_openssl continued to be DISABLED.

The solution was to chown mysql.mysql /var/lib/mysql/*.pem. Alternatively, I assume if you run mysql_ssl_rsa_setup as the mysql user, it will create the files with the correct permissions.

Craig Wright
  • 111
0

The private key file should look like (PKCS#1 format):

-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
. . .
-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----

If your private key begins instead with:

-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----

(PKCS#8 format), then you should convert it like this:

openssl rsa -in server-key.pem -out server-key.pem

Don't manually add the "missing" "RSA" tag by hand, because the format is different.

rustyx
  • 1,066
  • 15
  • 17
-1

The SSL startup options should be near the top of your my.cnf file or they might be ignored. I had problems running mysql 5.6 on RHEL 6.4 where the SSL variables were being ignored, I had them at the end of the my.cnf file. I moved them at the top of the file (just below [mysqld]) then I restarted the server and everything was fine.

Christine
  • 1