Netgate Discussion Forum
    • Categories
    • Recent
    • Tags
    • Popular
    • Users
    • Search
    • Register
    • Login

    Nginx prompts for PEM pass when starting UI (pfSense 2.3-RC)

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved webGUI
    1 Posts 1 Posters 514 Views
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as topic
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • L
      LinuxTracker
      last edited by

      When a password protected key is used to import a SSL certificate, nginx prompts for a PEM password, every time the UI starts.
      I'm wondering if this will lock out an admin, after a remote restart.

      Here's what I saw.

      When I use StartSSL's recommended CSR command

      openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout yourname.key -out yourname.csr
      

      it mandates assigning a PEM password.

      When that password protected key is used in an nginx SSL cert
      nginx prompts for the PEM pass whenever the webserver is started/restarted.

      When I restarted pfSense, it paused for the PEM pass, seemingly before loading NAT & rules.
      I was at another computer on the LAN and pfSense didn't respond to ping/SSH/WebUI.

      I had to enter the password at the local console.

      My impression is that if I had restarted this pfSense box remotely, it would have been unreachable until the PEM pass was entered at the local console.
      I did not test to see if this is actually the case.  Sorry.

      I opted to strip the password from the key using

      openssl rsa -in yourname.key -out yournamenopass.key
      

      and reimport the nginx UI certfificate

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • First post
        Last post
      Copyright 2025 Rubicon Communications LLC (Netgate). All rights reserved.