Enable HTTPS directly in Opencast

Edit etc/org.ops4j.pax.web.cfg and set:

# This property specifies the comma separated list of addresses used by Opencast to listen to (e.g. localhost or
# localhost,10.0.0.1). Host names or IP addresses can be used. Pax Web default value is "0.0.0.0".
org.ops4j.pax.web.listening.addresses=0.0.0.0

# Whether Opencast itself should handle HTTPS traffic.
# Even if you set this to 'false',you can still use an HTTP proxy to handle SSL.
org.osgi.service.http.secure.enabled=true

# The secure server port to use if running Opencast with HTTPS (as opposed to
# a proxy handling HTTPS).
# Note that we use the docker proxy for the port-mapping from 8843 from within
# the container to 443 at the host
# Don't run Opencast with root privileges, which is a security issue
org.osgi.service.http.port.secure=8443

# Path to the keystore file.
# Use the Java `keytool` to generate this file.
# Example:
#   keytool -genkey -keyalg RSA -validity 365 -alias serverkey \
#     -keypass password -storepass password -keystore keystore.jks
org.ops4j.pax.web.ssl.keystore=<path_to_keystore>

# Password used for keystore.
org.ops4j.pax.web.ssl.keystore.password=<the_keystore_password>

#  Password for private key entry inside server keystore.
org.ops4j.pax.web.ssl.key.password=<the_key_password>

Port-Forwarding required

Note that Opencast most likely can't bind to port 443. That's why you still need to reverse-proxy or port-forward if you want to avoid URLs with port specified like https://host:8443/ which is technically perfectly okay but may confuse users or may be perceived as "ugly".

Here is a non-comprehensive lists of tools and methods which can be used for port forwarding:

Port-Forwarding with iptables

A rule like

iptables -A PREROUTING -t nat -i eth0 -p tcp --dport 443 -j REDIRECT --to-port 8443
# Allow also localhost traffic to use :443
# iptables -A OUTPUT -t nat -o lo -p tcp --dport 443 -j REDIRECT --to-port 8443

should do the job after replacing eth0 with the network interface your Opencast consumers will connect on. Note that you usually want to persist the rule.

Port-Forwarding with docker(-proxy)

When starting a container from an Opencast image, either insert a command line argument to docker run: -p 443:8443 or add a ports: in docker-compose.yaml.

Port-Forwarding with sniproxy

Sniproxy can be used as well, especially if you have multiple servers running on the same machine that handle HTTPS individually (no termination proxy).

user, pidfile, error_log ...

listen 443 {
    proto tls
    table https_hosts
    fallback 127.0.0.1:8443

    access_log {
        filename /var/log/sniproxy/https_access.log
        priority notice
    }
}

table https_hosts {
    .*\.opencast\.example\.org 127.0.0.1:8443
}

Creating the keystore

What you need is the TLS private key and the certificate including the whole chain between the root certificate, all intermediates and the certificate itself.

Step 1: Obtaining the certificate chain

If you only have the key and the certificate, I recommend certificatechain.io or cert-chain-resolver. The latter can be used as follows:

# Obtain the chain for cert.pem and save it at opencast.chain.pem.tmp
# The -s command switch includes the root certificate; this is not
# mandatory and might add some overhead
cert-chain-resolver -s -o "opencast.chain.pem.tmp" "cert.pem"

# Verify the certificate using the chain
openssl verify -crl_download -crl_check -untrusted "opencast.chain.pem.tmp" "cert.pem"

Step 2: Create the p12 keystore

If the private key (assumed to be key.pem) is encrypted (password protected), issue the following command. Note that there are safer ways supplying the key's password to OpenSSL.

openssl pkcs12 \
        -export \
        -inkey "key.pem" \
        -passin "pass:<the_keys_password>" \
        -in "opencast.chain.pem.tmp" \
        -name "serverkey" \
        -out "opencast.p12" \
        -passout "pass:<the_keystore_password>"

In case the private key is not protected by password:

openssl pkcs12 \
        -export \
        -inkey "key.pem" \
        -in "opencast.chain.pem.tmp" \
        -name "serverkey" \
        -out "opencast.p12" \
        -passout "pass:<the_keystore_password>"

Step 3: Import the p12 keystore into a Java keystore:

keytool \
        -importkeystore \
        -srckeystore "opencast.p12" \
        -srcstoretype "pkcs12" \
        -srcstorepass "<the_keystore_password>" \
        -destkeystore "keystore.jks" \
        -storepass "<the_keystore_password>"
# print out details about the JKS built
keytool \
        -keystore "keystore.jks" \
        -list \
        -destalias serverkey \
        -storepass "<the_keystore_password>"

There exists a shell script automating that task .

Default to HTTPS

When finished, restarted and verified that HTTPS works as expected, you can change Opencast's default URL to the HTTPS one.

Set org.opencastproject.server.url to the HTTPS-URL in etc/custom.properties.

org.opencastproject.server.url=https://opencast.example.com