Checking https / http without installing key

[Sanjeev Singhal]

Hi,

I have been trying to do a workaround with Netscape 3.5.1 on Sun/Solris.

I needed to check if I can access my secured pages on the server and this is
what I did...

1. I have one instance of the server running on port 80, in which all pages
of my website are created.
2. I created another instance of the server on port 443 (secured). The
docroot of this is different from the first instance.
3. I then posted one simple HTML page in the docroot of secure instance.
4. I then, tried to call this page using Https from the first instance,
giving fully qualified domain or IP with the port address.

When I click on the link which points to secured link, the document would
not open and the sever returns a message "page not found".

Can any one tell me, what is wrong and wheather I can test secured and
non-secured pages like this or I will necessorily require certificates to
test.

Thanks,

Sanjeev

[Nelson B. Bolyard]

Sanjeev Singhal wrote:
>
> I have been trying to do a workaround with Netscape 3.5.1 on Sun/Solris.

What are you trying to work around?

> I needed to check if I can access my secured pages on the server and this is
> what I did...
>
> 1. I have one instance of the server running on port 80, in which all pages
> of my website are created.
> 2. I created another instance of the server on port 443 (secured). The
> docroot of this is different from the first instance.
> 3. I then posted one simple HTML page in the docroot of secure instance.
> 4. I then, tried to call this page using Https from the first instance,
> giving fully qualified domain or IP with the port address.
>
> When I click on the link which points to secured link, the document would
> not open and the sever returns a message "page not found".
>
> Can any one tell me, what is wrong and wheather I can test secured and
> non-secured pages like this or I will necessorily require certificates to
> test.

The server must have a server certificate and corresponding private key to
be able to do https. Without those, the server cannot do https at all, not
even to the point of issuing a "page not found" error.

If you got a page not found error then either
a) your https server _did_ have a server certificate and private key, or
b) the URL in the link you used was really an http URL, not an https URL,
and you were not using https at all.

(Please continue to direct all followup questions to this newsgroup. Thanks.)
--
Nelson Bolyard Sun / Netscape Alliance
Disclaimer: I speak for myself, not for Netscape