# Enabling ssl crashes windows nginx 1.0.0

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/enabling-ssl-crashes-windows-nginx-1-0-0/205919>\
**Category:** NGINX\
**Created:** [April 18, 2011, 6:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/enabling-ssl-crashes-windows-nginx-1-0-0/205919 "2011-04-18T18:58:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![luislavena](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/0ea827/32.png) [@luislavena](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/luislavena)\
**Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 6:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/enabling-ssl-crashes-windows-nginx-1-0-0/205919/1 "2011-04-18T18:58:12Z")

</div>

I just got nginx running great on my windows box over port 80. As soon  
as I tried to have it serve up ssl things quickly degrade.

After starting up nginx I get a prompt to enter my passphrase for my ssl  
which is correct. After entering the passphrase… nginx looks to run for  
5 seconds and then quits. I see this in the log:

2011/04/18 09:49:09 [alert] 1992#4548: the event “ngx\_master\_1992” was  
not signaled for 5s

I’m not sure what can be done about this error. My conf looks like:

server {  
listen 443 default ssl;  
server\_name \_;

```
    ssl_certificate ssl/mysite.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key ssl/mysite.key;

    location / {
        root html;
        index index.html index.htm;

    }

```

}

I feel like I’m missing something rather minor. Any help would be much  
appreciated.

Thanks,  
Jake

Posted at Nginx Forum:

> **[Enabling ssl crashes windows nginx 1.0.0](https://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,192121,192121#msg-192121)**
>
> I just got nginx running great on my windows box over port 80. As soon as I tried to have it serve up ssl things quickly degrade. After starting up nginx I get a prompt to enter my passphrase for my ssl which is correct. After entering the...

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jakehilton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/9dc877/32.png) [@jakehilton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jakehilton)\
**Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 5:19am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/enabling-ssl-crashes-windows-nginx-1-0-0/205919/2 "2011-04-19T05:19:47Z")

</div>

Have same problems, anybody solved this?  
Tried with nginx 1.0.0 and 0.9.7, results are same.  
Here is ssl part of config file:

```
server {
    listen 443;
    server_name localhost;

    ssl on;
    ssl_certificate ssl/server.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key ssl/server.key;

    ssl_session_timeout 5m;

    location / {
        root html;
        index index.html index.htm;
    }
}

```

Posted at Nginx Forum:

> **[Re: Enabling ssl crashes windows nginx 1.0.0](https://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,192121,192244#msg-192244)**
>
> I just got nginx running great on my windows box over port 80. As soon as I tried to have it serve up ssl things quickly degrade. After starting up nginx I get a prompt to enter my passphrase for my ssl which is correct. After entering the...

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jakehilton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/9dc877/32.png) [@jakehilton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jakehilton)\
**Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 6:59am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/enabling-ssl-crashes-windows-nginx-1-0-0/205919/3 "2011-04-19T06:59:52Z")

</div>

On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 12:57:57PM -0400, jakehilton wrote:

> I’m not sure what can be done about this error. My conf looks like:  
> index index.html index.htm;
> 
> ```
> }
> 
> ```
> 
> }
> 
> I feel like I’m missing something rather minor. Any help would be much  
> appreciated.

An nginx worker of Windows version does not inherit configuraiton  
file from a master process as Unix version does. So it loads certificate  
separately and waits for the passphrase too. The only solution is to  
remove passphrase from certificate key.

–  
Igor S.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jakehilton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/9dc877/32.png) [@jakehilton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jakehilton)\
**Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 7:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/enabling-ssl-crashes-windows-nginx-1-0-0/205919/4 "2011-04-19T19:05:09Z")

</div>

Removing the passphrase did in fact work! Thank you.

Pitty there is a disconnect from the prompt to enter in the passphrase  
and the worker.

I think nginx is worth it though. 🙂

Thanks,  
Jake

Posted at Nginx Forum:

> **[Re: Enabling ssl crashes windows nginx 1.0.0](https://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,192121,192385#msg-192385)**
>
> I just got nginx running great on my windows box over port 80. As soon as I tried to have it serve up ssl things quickly degrade. After starting up nginx I get a prompt to enter my passphrase for my ssl which is correct. After entering the...

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jakehilton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/9dc877/32.png) [@jakehilton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jakehilton)\
**Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 5:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/enabling-ssl-crashes-windows-nginx-1-0-0/205919/5 "2011-04-19T17:17:04Z")

</div>

On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 11:59 PM, Igor S. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> An nginx worker of Windows version does not inherit configuraiton  
> file from a master process as Unix version does. So it loads certificate  
> separately and waits for the passphrase too. The only solution is to  
> remove passphrase from certificate key.

## Set strong permissions of course, but you can also probably protect the key file with the encrypting file system on Windows boxes, encrypted with the only the user account nginx uses and no recovery key. This makes it about as safe as possible, although an attacker that gains LocalSystem privileges can still get at the private key with some work (really, anyone who has the rights to attach a debugger to the nginx process could get the key from memory).

RPM