Using SSL Client Certificates to log into Trac

Set up your SSL PKI

I will not explain in detail how to set up SSL for Apache. There are a lot of good step-by-step guides out there that can help you in this:

• In my opinion the best guide is this one: ​http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1818
• The official apache mod_ssl documentation can be found here: ​http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/ssl/

I'll assume that you have the following by now:

• a certificate for your Trac web server
• client certificates for your users (already installed in their browsers)

How to configure mod_ssl

Here are the most important apache directives.

Server configuration (httpd.conf):

<IfModule mod_ssl.c>
...
SSLVerifyClient require
SSLVerifyDepth 1
SSLCACertificateFile /your/root/certificate.pem
...
</IfModule>

Virtual host configuration:

...
SSLEngine on

<Location /trac>
  ...
  SSLRequireSSL
  ...
</Location>

<Location "/login">
  # Rather than setting REMOTE_USER through basic authentication
  # we'll set it directly as the client's certificate's common name.
  SSLUserName SSL_CLIENT_S_DN_CN
</Location>