OpenDJ: Troubleshooting LDAP SSL connections

Troubleshooting Secure Socket Layer (SSL, also now standardized as TLS) issues is not trivial and there is no secret sauce specific to OpenDJ.

Should an LDAP SSL connection fails due to the server, you should find a descriptive error message in the server’s errors log (in logs/errors). But sometime the connection is aborted by the client with some obscure message. Often we see a message ending with ” javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: no cipher suites in common“.

Java has some debugging capabilities embedded and they are pretty easy to use with the OpenDJ LDAP directory server, which just need to be restarted with some additional arguments: -Djavax.net.debug=all or -Djavax.net.debug=ssl.

There are two ways to add extra arguments to the OpenDJ server startup command, using an environment variable, or using the java.properties file.

Using env variable

– you define the OPENDS_JAVA_ARGS environment variable. And you restart the server. If you do so, make sure you include all previous arguments.

OPENDS_JAVA_ARGS='-server -Xms1G -Xmx1G -Djavax.net.debug=ssl,handshake,trustmanager' bin/start-ds

Using the java.properties file

Edit the java.properties file in the config directory.
Since you probably only want to track the OpenDS directory server SSL access, you should append the -Djavax.net.debug=ssl,handshake,trustmanager args to the start-ds line (rather than applying it to all commands).

start-ds.java-args=-Xms1G -Xmx1G -server -Djavax.net.debug=ssl,handshake,trustmanager

Save the file and run the dsjavaproperties command:

bin/dsjavaproperties

Now restart the server, using the start-ds command

Where is the output ?

All SSL related logs are output in the logs/server.out file.
To test, you can use ldapsearch :

bin/ldapsearch -Z -X -p 1636 -b "" -s base '(objectclass=*)'

And if you look into the logs/server.out file, you will see something similar to this:

Using SSLEngineImpl.
 Allow unsafe renegotiation: false
 Allow legacy hello messages: true
 Is initial handshake: true
 Is secure renegotiation: false
 LDAP Request Handler 0 for connection handler LDAP Connection Handler 0.0.0.0 port 1636, READ: SSL v2, contentType = Handshake, translated length = 81
 *** ClientHello, TLSv1
 RandomCookie: GMT: 1287771875 bytes = { 68, 231, 5, 253, 105, 26, 137, 36, 38, 238, 12, 141, 110, 12, 59, 10, 192, 135, 113, 119, 108, 153, 10, 31, 127, 120, 110, 61 }
 Session ID: {}
 Cipher Suites: [SSL_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_MD5, SSL_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_SHA, TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA, TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA, TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA, TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA, TLS_DHE_DSS_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA, TLS_DHE_DSS_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA, SSL_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA, SSL_DHE_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA, SSL_DHE_DSS_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA, SSL_RSA_WITH_DES_CBC_SHA, SSL_DHE_RSA_WITH_DES_CBC_SHA, SSL_DHE_DSS_WITH_DES_CBC_SHA, SSL_RSA_EXPORT_WITH_RC4_40_MD5, SSL_RSA_EXPORT_WITH_DES40_CBC_SHA, SSL_DHE_RSA_EXPORT_WITH_DES40_CBC_SHA, SSL_DHE_DSS_EXPORT_WITH_DES40_CBC_SHA, TLS_EMPTY_RENEGOTIATION_INFO_SCSV]
 ...

This will help you to identify what part of the secure connection is failing and fix it.

Note that -Djavax.net.debug=ssl enables debug of the SSL connections, while -Djavax.net.debug=all enables full debugging including use of certificates, and more. You can also find more debug options by using -Djavax.net.debug=help.