CouchDB Permissions over HTTPS

Question

UPDATE / SUMMARY:

I created a blog article here about the process I went through and my config file has changed slightly from below: https://medium.com/@silverbackdan/installing-couchdb-2-0-nosql-with-centos-7-and-certbot-lets-encrypt-f412198c3051#.216m9mk1m

Main issues with HTTPS:

• If running HTTP and HTTPS, shard dbs appear on HTTPS
• Fauxton features lacking over HTTPS (admin user management, config management, setup wizard, Mango indexing/querying)
• Not sure if they should be, but databases over HTTP and HTTPS are not the same

I hope I'm just missing something really obvious

ORIGINAL POST:

I'm trying to configure HTTPS (SSL) with CouchDB 2.0. I'm compiling a guide for others to be able to follow as well but have come across some issues.

I think over HTTPS, I don't have the same permissions as when I enable HTTP and use that instead. In Fauxton over HTTP I can see the configuration and I can run the setup procedure. With HTTPS I'm getting errors where it says I cannot create a database (which it tries to do automatically) because they start with an underscore. Most databases get set up but there's a few which show errors such as "_cluster_setup" when I visit the Configuration page.

Additionally I get repeating error messages which does not stop CouchDB, but it says the database "_users" does not exist (database_does_not_exist). It doesn't exist when I enable and connect over HTTP, but it does exist when I connect over HTTPS. If I enable both HTTP and HTTPS then with my HTTPS connection I end up having a lot of shard databases (I'm new to NoSQL and CouchDB so I'm not sure what that's about, but they appear when errors show up similar to the above - creating databases starting with underscores). Either way, I see those shard databases when logged in via HTTPS but not HTTP (Fauxton shows them as "unable to load, and then I am just deleting them from the data directory at the moment)

There are also issues with accessing Fauxton over HTTPS using Chrome, but I think that's a known bug and it's OK to use Firefox or Safari at the moment.

Can anybody tell me if there are any settings which mean that a connection over port 6984 using HTTPS can have the same administrative rights as 5984 of HTTP? ...Or what the permissions issues there may be that results in the HTTPS connection bringing up these errors about underscores at the beginning of table names as I think that could basically resolve my main issues.

Here's my local.ini file which may be of some use (I have also commented out ";httpd={couch_httpd, start_link, []}" in default.ini as it says to here: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=48203146

; CouchDB Configuration Settings

; Custom settings should be made in this file. They will override settings
; in default.ini, but unlike changes made to default.ini, this file won't be
; overwritten on server upgrade.

[couchdb]
;max_document_size = 4294967296 ; bytes
;os_process_timeout = 5000
uuid = **REMOVED**

[couch_peruser]
; If enabled, couch_peruser ensures that a private per-user database
; exists for each document in _users. These databases are writable only
; by the corresponding user. Databases are in the following form:
; userdb-{hex encoded username}
;enable = true
; If set to true and a user is deleted, the respective database gets
; deleted as well.
;delete_dbs = true

[chttpd]
;port = 5984
;bind_address = 0.0.0.0
; Options for the MochiWeb HTTP server.
;server_options = [{backlog, 128}, {acceptor_pool_size, 16}]
; For more socket options, consult Erlang's module 'inet' man page.
;socket_options = [{recbuf, 262144}, {sndbuf, 262144}, {nodelay, true}]

[httpd]
; NOTE that this only configures the "backend" node-local port, not the
; "frontend" clustered port. You probably don't want to change anything in
; this section.
; Uncomment next line to trigger basic-auth popup on unauthorized requests.
WWW-Authenticate = Basic realm="administrator"
bind_address = 0.0.0.0
; Uncomment next line to set the configuration modification whitelist. Only
; whitelisted values may be changed via the /_config URLs. To allow the admin
; to change this value over HTTP, remember to include {httpd,config_whitelist}
; itself. Excluding it from the list would require editing this file to update
; the whitelist.
config_whitelist = [{httpd,config_whitelist}, {log,level}, {etc,etc}]

[query_servers]
;nodejs = /usr/local/bin/couchjs-node /path/to/couchdb/share/server/main.js


[httpd_global_handlers]
;_google = {couch_httpd_proxy, handle_proxy_req, <<"http://www.google.com">>}

[couch_httpd_auth]
; If you set this to true, you should also uncomment the WWW-Authenticate line
; above. If you don't configure a WWW-Authenticate header, CouchDB will send
; Basic realm="server" in order to prevent you getting logged out.
require_valid_user = true
secret = **REMOVED**

[os_daemons]
; For any commands listed here, CouchDB will attempt to ensure that
; the process remains alive. Daemons should monitor their environment
; to know when to exit. This can most easily be accomplished by exiting
; when stdin is closed.
;foo = /path/to/command -with args

[daemons]
; enable SSL support by uncommenting the following line and supply the PEM's below.
; the default ssl port CouchDB listens on is 6984
httpsd = {couch_httpd, start_link, [https]}

[ssl]
cert_file = /home/couchdb/couchdb/certs/cert.pem
key_file = /home/couchdb/couchdb/certs/privkey.pem
;password = somepassword
; set to true to validate peer certificates
;verify_ssl_certificates = false
; Set to true to fail if the client does not send a certificate. Only used if verify_ssl_certificates is true.
;fail_if_no_peer_cert = false
; Path to file containing PEM encoded CA certificates (trusted
; certificates used for verifying a peer certificate). May be omitted if
; you do not want to verify the peer.
cacert_file = /home/couchdb/couchdb/certs/chain.pem
; The verification fun (optional) if not specified, the default
; verification fun will be used.
;verify_fun = {Module, VerifyFun}
; maximum peer certificate depth
ssl_certificate_max_depth = 1
;
; Reject renegotiations that do not live up to RFC 5746.
secure_renegotiate = true
; The cipher suites that should be supported.
; Can be specified in erlang format "{ecdhe_ecdsa,aes_128_cbc,sha256}"
; or in OpenSSL format "ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA256".
;ciphers = ["ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA256", "ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA"]
ciphers = undefined
; The SSL/TLS versions to support
tls_versions = [tlsv1, 'tlsv1.1', 'tlsv1.2']

; To enable Virtual Hosts in CouchDB, add a vhost = path directive. All requests to
; the Virual Host will be redirected to the path. In the example below all requests
; to http://example.com/ are redirected to /database.
; If you run CouchDB on a specific port, include the port number in the vhost:
; example.com:5984 = /database
[vhosts]
REMOVEDDOMAIN.COM:* = ./database

[update_notification]
;unique notifier name=/full/path/to/exe -with "cmd line arg"

; To create an admin account uncomment the '[admins]' section below and add a
; line in the format 'username = password'. When you next start CouchDB, it
; will change the password to a hash (so that your passwords don't linger
; around in plain-text files). You can add more admin accounts with more
; 'username = password' lines. Don't forget to restart CouchDB after
; changing this.
[admins]
;admin = mysecretpassword
**REMOVED** = **REMOVED**

[cors]
origins = *
credentials = true
headers = accept, authorization, content-type, origin, referer
methods = GET, PUT, POST, HEAD, DELETE

Answer 1

I've been in touch with the CouchDB team via a chat. CouchDB has been well tested using haproxy, so I've been advised to simply use haproxy instead as erlang can be very difficult to configure for SSL. I'll update the article I've written with complete instructions using haproxy once I've got everything working.