= Securing tracd with stunnel = 
I would appreciate if others could go over this  tutorial on securing (at least for avoiding plaintext sending of auth) tracd  and provide any feedback. It works for me on trac 0.9.2. 

Using stunnel version 4 or higher, you can create a tracd configuration file that passes requests on an https port to the port you specify when running tracd. In this manner, your users can access tracd using an `https://` request, ensuring their requests (and passwords) aren't being sent cleartext.

Put this file in /etc/stunnel/stunnel-tracd.conf:

{{{
# Provide the full path to your certificate-key pair file
cert = /etc/stunnel/stunnel.pem

# no pid
pid = 

# change the UID and GID of the process for security reasons
setuid = nobody
setgid = nobody

[tracd]
accept  = 8993
connect = localhost:8992
}}}

I also added tracd to /etc/services:
{{{
tracd       8992/tcp                        # trac web server
}}}

If you don't already have a certificate, you need to create a self-signed .pem certificate file, you can put it in /etc/stunnel/stunnel.pem. You do this with openssl:

{{{
openssl req -new -x509 -days 365 -nodes -config stunnel.cnf -out stunnel.pem -keyout stunnel.pem
}}}

The stunnel.cnf file mentioned here is in the source distribution for stunnel, in the tools subdirectory. It will ask you for your state, country, etc. After it generates the .pem file move it to where the .conf file above indicates. Note that depending on what your `umask` is, you may need to adjust the permissions on the `stunnel.pem` file -- 600 (readable and writeable only by owner) should work. 

Make sure to apply the patch in [http://projects.edgewall.com/trac/ticket/2553 ticket 2553] '''and''' set {{{base_url=https://...}}} as of trac 0.9.2 and later so that tracd doesn't forward to an http url.

For trac 0.11 no patching needed: read #6472 and modify trac.ini 
{{{
base_url=https://...
use_base_url_for_redirect = true
}}}

Now you just need to run stunnel, then tracd:

{{{
# /usr/sbin/stunnel /etc/stunnel/stunnel-tracd.conf
# tracd -d --hostname=localhost --port 8992 --auth [your auth options here] [trac_env_directory]
}}}

Now trac will be accessible at https://url:8993/trac -- the requests will be forwarded internally to port 8992 on localhost, which tracd is listening on. If you self-signed your certificate your browser will ask you to confirm it. 

Note that the use of 'localhost' is crucial - it prevents people from the outside to bypass your SSL restriction and stops them from conecting to port 8992 directly.