openSSL not working with PHP built-in webserver

OS: Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit

PHP version: 5.4.6-2~precise+1

When I test an https page I am writing through the built-in webserver (php5 -S localhost:8000), Firefox (16.0.1) says "Problem loading: The connection was interrupted", while the terminal tells me "::1:37026 Invalid request (Unsupported SSL request)".

phpinfo() tells me:

• Registered Stream Socket Transports: tcp, udp, unix, udg, ssl, sslv3, tls
• [curl] SSL: Yes
• SSL Version: OpenSSL/1.0.1

• openssl:

  OpenSSL support: enabled

  OpenSSL Library Version OpenSSL 1.0.1 14 Mar 2012

  OpenSSL Header Version OpenSSL 1.0.1 14 Mar 2012

Yes, http pages work just fine.

Any ideas?

4 Answers

See the manual section on the built-in webserver shim:

It doesn't support SSL encryption. It's for plain HTTP requests. The openssl extension and function support is unrelated. It does not accept requests or send responses over the stream wrappers.

If you want SSL to run over it, try a stunnel wrapper:

php -S localhost:8000 & stunnel3 -d 443 -r 8080 

It's just for toying anyway.

It's been three years since the last update; here's how I got it working in 2021 on macOS (as an extension to mario's answer):

# Install stunnel brew install stunnel # Find the configuration directory cd /usr/local/etc/stunnel # Copy the sample conf file to actual conf file cp stunnel.conf-sample stunnel.conf # Edit conf vim stunnel.conf 

Modify stunnel.conf so it looks like this: (all other options can be deleted)

; ************************************************************************** ; * Global options * ; ************************************************************************** ; Debugging stuff (may be useful for troubleshooting) ; Enable foreground = yes to make stunnel work with Homebrew services foreground = yes debug = info output = /usr/local/var/log/stunnel.log ; ************************************************************************** ; * Service definitions (remove all services for inetd mode) * ; ************************************************************************** ; ***************************************** Example TLS server mode services ; TLS front-end to a web server [https] accept = 443 connect = 8000 cert = /usr/local/etc/stunnel/stunnel.pem ; "TIMEOUTclose = 0" is a workaround for a design flaw in Microsoft SChannel ; Microsoft implementations do not use TLS close-notify alert and thus they ; are vulnerable to truncation attacks ;TIMEOUTclose = 0 

This accepts HTTPS / SSL at port 443 and connects to a local webserver running at port 8000, using stunnel's default bogus cert at /usr/local/etc/stunnel/stunnel.pem. Log level is info and log outputs are written to /usr/local/var/log/stunnel.log.

Start stunnel:

brew services start stunnel # Different for Linux 

Start the webserver:

php -S localhost:8000 

Now you can visit to visit your webserver: screenshot

There should be a cert error and you'll have to click through a browser warning but that gets you to the point where you can hit your localhost with HTTPS requests, for development.

I've been learning nginx and Laravel recently, and this error has came up many times. It's hard to diagnose because you need to align nginx with Laravel and also the SSL settings in your operating system at the same time (assuming you are making a self-signed cert).

If you are on Windows, it is even more difficult because you have to fight unix carriage returns when dealing with SSL certs. Sometimes you can go through the steps correctly, but you get ruined by cert validation issues. I find the trick is to make the certs in Ubuntu or Mac and email them to yourself, or use the linux subsystem.

In my case, I kept running into an issue where I declare HTTPS somewhere but php artisan serve only works on HTTP.

I just caused this Invalid request (Unsupported SSL request) error again after SSL was hooked up fine. It turned out to be that I was using Axios to make a POST request to https://. Changing it to POST http:// fixed it.

My recommendation to anyone would be to take a look at where and how HTTP/HTTPS is being used.

The textbook definition is probably something like php artisan serve only works over HTTP but requires underlying SSL layer.

Use Ngrok

1. Expose your server's port like so: ngrok http <server port>

2. Browse with the ngrok's secure public address (the one with https).

Note: Though it works like a charm, it seems an overkill since it requires internet and would appreciate better recommendations.