Andrew took the trouble of writing this long answer, and though the
problem hasn't reoccurred, I thought I'd post it to the mailing list in
case it might help someone one day.
a...@gedanken.demon.co.uk (Andrew M. Bishop) writes:
> Hi,
>
>> Hello. It was a ho-hum day here offline with emacs-w3m.
>> The only interesting things is that it asked me
>> Bad cert ident jidanni2.jidanni.org from jidanni2: accept? (y or n)
>>
>> But that is localhost, and I bend over backwards,
>> LocalHost
>> {
>> <?php print php_uname(n)."\n";?>
>> <?php print php_uname(n).".jidanni.org\n";?>
>> localhost
>> 127.0.0.1
>> ::ffff:127.0.0.1
>> ip6-localhost
>> ::1
>> }
>> in the script I use to create wwwoffle.conf
>>
>> Maybe wwwoffle should create a certificate or something for localhost.
>
> There should be a certificate for localhost. You will get this if you
> connect to http://localhost:8443/ or http://127.0.0.1:8443/.
>
> The problem is that jidanni2.jidanni.org and jidanni2 are the same
> machine but it isn't possible for them to share a certificate. We
> need to provide the certificate *before* the client will send us the
> HTTP request that contains the hostname that it is connecting. This
> means that the best we can do is to ask the operating system what the
> hostname of the server socket is.
>
> This is a more general problem on the internet; it isn't WWWOFFLE
> specific. While it is possible for many DNS names to point to the
> same IP address and share a web server it isn't possible to share an
> HTTPS server. A unique IP address is needed for each DNS name.
>
> Your options are:
>
> 1) remove jidanni2 from LocalHost (but then you won't be able to
> connect using that name and HTTP).
>
> 2) Always use the fully qualified hostname when playing with HTTPS.
>
> 3) Use localhost rather than a hostname (if it is the same machine).
