Download a cacert.pem for RailsInstaller

README.md

Why?

There is a long standing issue in Ruby where the net/http library by default does not check the validity of an SSL certificate during a TLS handshake. Rather than deal with the underlying problem (a missing certificate authority, a self-signed certificate, etc.) one tends to see bad hacks everywhere. This can lead to problems down the road.

From what I can see the OpenSSL library that Rails Installer delivers has no certificate authorities defined. So, let's go fetch some from the curl website. And since this is for ruby, why don't we download and install the file with a ruby script?

Installation

The Ruby Way! (Fun)

This assumes your have already installed the Rails Installer for Windows.

Download the ruby script to your Desktop folder from https://gist.github.com/raw/867550/win_fetch_cacerts.rb. Then in your command prompt, execute the ruby script:

ruby "%USERPROFILE%\Desktop\win_fetch_cacerts.rb"

Now make ruby aware of your certificate authority bundle by setting SSL_CERT_FILE. To set this in your current command prompt session, type:

set SSL_CERT_FILE=C:\RailsInstaller\cacert.pem

To make this a permanent setting, add this in your control panel.

The Manual Way (Boring)

Download the cacert.pem file from http://curl.haxx.se/ca/cacert.pem. Save this file to C:\RailsInstaller\cacert.pem.

Now make ruby aware of your certificate authority bundle by setting SSL_CERT_FILE. To set this in your current command prompt session, type:

set SSL_CERT_FILE=C:\RailsInstaller\cacert.pem

To make this a permanent setting, add this in your control panel.

win_fetch_cacerts.rb

require 'net/http'

# create a path to the file "C:\RailsInstaller\cacert.pem"
cacert_file = File.join(%w{c: RailsInstaller cacert.pem})

Net::HTTP.start("curl.haxx.se") do |http|
  resp = http.get("/ca/cacert.pem")
  if resp.code == "200"
    open(cacert_file, "wb") { |file| file.write(resp.body) }
    puts "\n\nA bundle of certificate authorities has been installed to"
    puts "C:\\RailsInstaller\\cacert.pem\n"
    puts "* Please set SSL_CERT_FILE in your current command prompt session with:"
    puts "     set SSL_CERT_FILE=C:\\RailsInstaller\\cacert.pem"
    puts "* To make this a permanent setting, add it to Environment Variables"
    puts "  under Control Panel -> Advanced -> Environment Variables"
  else
    abort "\n\n>>>> A cacert.pem bundle could not be downloaded."
  end
end