SSL Certificate change in Apache (Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name)

Question

Hi An SSL certificate expired on one of my servers and I ordered a new one from godaddy. But if i replace the server.crt , the chain certificate and the server.key (the key used to generate the csr file) end up getting the ERROR

Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name

Note :

1. I have not made any changes in any configuration files.
2. I simply replaced the old certificates and key with the new one.I checked the key andcertificate matched.
3. I am using Apache 2.2 on Windows 2003 server edition. I am restarting the server after the change.
4. The server starts up fine if I revert back to the old certificates.

What could be the problem,I dont know how SSL certificates could result in this error.

Answer 1

you have to edit the /etc/apache2/apache2.conf and, at the end of the file, add:

servername myserver 

place your server name in place of myserver.

also check this file:

/etc/hosts

make sure it matches your hostname. also make sure the fully qualified domain name is listed first. i.e.:

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost

Answer 2

The problem was in the combination of 1. server.crt 2. server.key (the private key used for generating the .csr used in creating the certificate. 3. ca.crt (the chain certificate)

I verified the private key issued using this article http://helpdesk.wisc.edu/middleware/page.php?id=4064 , But I was not using the chain certificate. However the error in Apache was really ambiguous which led to further confusion.