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I'm trying to setup an SSL SVN server and when I try to checkout remotely I get the error Server certificate was missing commonName attribute in subject name

I did some googling and from what I can tell I need to add the IP address of the URL I'm accessing to openss.cnf with the commonName attribute like below. I did that but I still get the error.

commonName                      = xx.xxx.xx.xx
commonName_max                  = 64

1 Answer 1

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It sounds like a CommonName mismatch with the SSL certificate. Does the CN in your SSL certificate match your server?

You can run the following to view the SSL certificate:

openssl x509 -noout -text -in ssl.crt

Edit

To generate a snake oil cert, first generate the key:

openssl genrsa -out host.key 1024

Now generate the certificate:

openssl req -new -key host.key -x509 -days 3650 -out host.crt

openssl will prompt you for the information:

Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]:
State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]:
Locality Name (eg, city) []:
Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]:
Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:
Common Name (eg, YOUR name) []:
Email Address []:

Common Name is where you specify your server's hostname.

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  • I don't see "CN" in there anywhere... perhaps that's the problem? It's not an official SSL, just something I generated on the server.
    – Ben
    Jun 18, 2010 at 15:45
  • Check out my edit, that may be the issue.
    – Warner
    Jun 18, 2010 at 15:52
  • Can I just modify the certificate now to include a common name rather than re-generate it?
    – Ben
    Jun 18, 2010 at 16:25
  • That's not possible.
    – Warner
    Jun 18, 2010 at 16:39

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