Renewing mecheng’s SSL certificate

Mecheng’s SSL (https) certificate expires every year on the 26th of January. Renewing process consists of
  1. Making payment as to renew the certificate, and
  2. Installing the new certificate on mecheng

The SSL certificate granting authority for mecheng.up.ac.za is GoDaddy, so start by going to http://www.godaddy.com/ and log in using the username mecheng.up.ac.za. Password hint : password is standard project assignment password except with a capatilized first letter. After logging in, there should be an alert giving notification that one of your services is expiring soon (If this is done in December of January). Proceed to use the GoDaddy web interface to pay for the renewal of the service.

Once the SSL service is renewed download the new certificate. From the godaddy website do the following

  1. my account link (top left of screen)
  2. under the products tab go SSL certificates
  3. proceed to follow the tabs as download the SSL certificate (options, control centre ...)

Then update the certificate on mecheng as follows

$ scp mecheng.up.ac.za.zip adymond@mecheng.up.ac.za:~/godaddy
$ ssh adymond@mecheng.up.ac.za
$ cd godaddy
$ unzip mecheng.up.ac.za.zip
$ sudo cp mecheng.up.ac.za.crt /etc/ssl/certs/
$ sudo cp gd_bundle.crt /etc/ssl/certs/
$ sudo service apache2 reload

If the certificate update was sucessfuly, the expirery date of the certificate should now be moved one year on. A way to check if the certificate expirey date has been extended, it to visit https://mecheng.up.ac.za and check out the certificate using your browser. After going to the project assignment page, right click or click on the https lock to get the info.

Previous topic

Installing the project assignment website on a Linux server

Next topic

Password recovery

This Page