hello all,
hopefully this is a rather quick question, but after searching around on google for the better part of an hour i'm still left without an answer.

i run apache to serve a rather low traffic site (just accessed by my friends and i), however i'm very security oriented and decided that "member" areas should be protected by ssl. i've gotten ssl up and working just as it should be. my only problem is that since this is just a personal site i won't be purchasing a certificate. of course, this means i get the "splash security screen" warning me about the certificate being unsigned.

this is somewhat irritating, and i'm curious to know if there's a way to prevent that splash screen from appearing every time. perhaps installing the certificate in IE(or whatever browser), but i'm unsure of how to allow my users to do this.

suggestions? :-)

I think it depends on the browser. With IE there is should be a button View Certificate which then shows the certificate in a seperate window. In that window there should also be a button to accept or install the certificate. You will have to do this for each browser that wishes to connect to the site though.

Syncrm is your certificate unsigned or self-signed? I know that mine is self signed and when you navigate to my page in your browser it will pop-up and say that the certificate has been signed by an untrusted party.

yeah, i know how to install the certificate... i was just wondering if there was a way in perl/cgi or perhaps even javascript to save the certificate. oh well... it's not a big problem, i was just curious.

and it's a self-signed certificate.

on a separate note, does anyone happen to know if it's possible to redirect an entire directory? example: i have different docroot for ssl, and there's a directory that used to be under my normal docroot which now resides under ssl. i would like to have any users who attempt to access any document under this directory to be redirected to the secure server.

any suggestions on that one? :-)

Oh you wanted it so that the users wouldn't get that little security advisory saying that the certificate is not signed by a recognized authority?

exactly.

Yes I wish I could find a way to do that too because it freaks out a lot of people who don't understand digital certificates. One guy said to me last night, "What are you trying to give me a virus or something?"

I guess if we did find a way to get around this then it would be really bad for companies like VeriSign. I hear they have a free trial for signing certificates. Maybe I'll check that out.

nevermind... a search on google answered my own question. sometimes i'm just way too lazy. but for those curious, here's the answer:

Redirect /service http://foo2.bar.com/service

apache config, of course.