Windows don’t support SSLPassPhraseDialog directive in Apache due to which it throws an error ‘SSLPassPhraseDialog builtin is not supported on Win32’.

Here at Bobcares, we have seen several such apache related errors as part of our Server Management Services for web hosts and online service providers.

Today we’ll take a look at the causes for this error and see the fix.

What causes ‘SSLPassPhraseDialog builtin is not supported on Win32’ error to occur

Now let’s discuss the possible causes for this error to occur.

1. The SSLPassPhraseDialog is a directive within the Apache configuration file httpd.conf or ssl.conf. Unfortunately, Windows doesn’t support this directive.

2. You can across this error message if you enter a password to encrypt the private key file while restarting Apache. This happens because Apache does not support encrypted private keys on a Windows Server.

How we fix the error ‘SSLPassPhraseDialog builtin is not supported on Win32’

Now let us take a look at the solution our Support Engineers provide to our customers to resolve this error.

1. Make sure that you remove the encryption from the RSA private key (when you preserve the original file).

2. Also, remove the passphrase i.e. – SSLPassPhraseDialog from the Apache configuration file. Here are the steps that we follow to do the same.

• First, make a copy of the private key and call it “server.key.org”
• Then use the OpenSSL command to remove the passphrase such as:
  openssl rsa -in server.key.org -out server.key
  (server.key will be your new private key with the passphrase removed.)
• Now, move this new key to the same path as to where the original one was kept. Also, verify that the directive called “SSLCertificateKeyFile” in the Apache config file points to the new private key.
• After that, find the directive “SSLPassPhraseDialog” in the file and comment it out by adding a # in front of the line.

Now, you must be able to startup Apache with SSL on Windows.

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Conclusion

In short, this error occurs due to the presence of SSLPassPhraseDialog directive in Apache which is not supported by Windows. Today, we saw how our Support Engineers resolve this error.