yum and ssl...

[K.C. Chan]

all,
I am setting up our own yum repository. It is working with our network. However I want to open it up for our remote servers only. How can I make this secure. I was thinking of using ssl certs and httpd proxy the session to our yum server behind the firewall. Any thoughts?

[Gopi Sekar]

I believe yum server runs using httpd(correct me if i am wrong), in that case enabling SSL transaction on the httpd is not going to be big issue.

But I doubt whether the yum client can handle https requests. For this you might have to use some wrapper utilites which enables client applications SSL aware. check this link:
http://www.openssl.org/related/apps.html

Regards,
Gopi

[K.C. Chan]

yeah, from the looks of it, I don't think yum client knows how to handle ssl key. Any idea on how to get yum client to work with ssl key? Thanks.

[Gopi Sekar]

I think for this you can use standard ssl wrapper utilities, the link I posted in the previous answer contains various utilities which I believe can act as SSL proxy for your client application.

I believe, stunnel has client side wrapper application which can talk with the SSL enabled service and negotiate all SSL transactions, after this the client application is called to handle clear text data.

Hope this helps,
Gopi

[Ivan Ferreira]

I think that you can use a SSH tunnel (port forwarding).

http://www.ssh.com/support/documentation/online/ssh/adminguide/32/Port_Forwarding.html