SSL-Warning filling catalina.out when connecting to MySQL Database, useSSL not working
Asked by Walter Sunk:

Hi,

my logfile logs/catalina.out is filled with the following message:

WARN: Establishing SSL connection without server's identity verification is not recommended. According to MySQL 5.5.45+, 5.6.26+ and 5.7.6+ requirements SSL connection must be established by default if explicit option isn't set. For compliance with existing applications not using SSL the verifyServerCertificate property is set to 'false'. You need either to explicitly disable SSL by setting useSSL=false, or set useSSL=true and provide truststore for server certificate verification.

I have tried the things below, but cannot get rid of this warning filling my logfile continuously.

In conf/server.xml I tried the following connection-strings:

\*) when set up confluence-mysql-user for using plaintext-connections: (GRANT ... REQUIRE NONE)

url="jdbc:[mysql://localhost:3306/confluence?useUnicode=true;characterEncoding=utf8;useSSL=false](mysql://localhost:3306/confluence?useUnicode=true;characterEncoding=utf8;verifyServerCertificate=false;ssl=true;requireSSL)"

url="jdbc:[mysql://localhost:3306/confluence?useSSL=false](mysql://localhost:3306/confluence?useUnicode=true;characterEncoding=utf8;verifyServerCertificate=false;ssl=true;requireSSL)"

\*) when set up confluence-mysql-user for using ssl-connections: (GRANT ... REQUIRE SSL)

url="jdbc:[mysql://localhost:3306/confluence?useUnicode=true;characterEncoding=utf8;verifyServerCertificate=false;](mysql://localhost:3306/confluence?useUnicode=true;characterEncoding=utf8;verifyServerCertificate=false;ssl=true;requireSSL)[useSSL](mysql://localhost:3306/confluence?useUnicode=true;characterEncoding=utf8;verifyServerCertificate=false;ssl=true;requireSSL)[=true;requireSSL](mysql://localhost:3306/confluence?useUnicode=true;characterEncoding=utf8;verifyServerCertificate=false;ssl=true;requireSSL)"

and in addition I added the mysql-ca-public-key-file to the truststore jre/lib/security/cacerts;  
for info, connecting in bash-commandline with the mysql-ca-public-key-file works fine:  
mysql -u confluence -p --ssl-ca=/etc/mysql/certs/ca.pem

\*) I tried to also use \&amp; instead of only ; in the connection-String, same results.

It seems that the useSSL in the connection-string has no effect, the warning is always logged.

I found this MySQL-Connector-Bug:<https://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=80198>  
but according to this using useSSL=true should not log the warning, however the warning is always logged.

My Setup:  
Confluence 5.10.1  
mysql Ver 14.14 Distrib 5.7.16, for Linux (x86_64)  
mysql-connector-java-5.1.40 (also tried 5.1.39)  
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Server

Thanks for help.


Answers:
author: Walter Sunk
body: I noticed that I have to edit \<CONFLUENCE-DATA-DIR\>/confluence.cfg.xml to set the connection-String and not \<CONFLUENCE-DIR\>/conf/server.xml

Problem solved, useSSL is working when setting the connection-String in confluence.cfg.xml

comments: author: koganm
body: Hi Walter,

Can you reply with the exact string please. I have tried the below and I still still receive these errors:

\<property name="hibernate.connection.url"\>jdbc:mysql://localhost/confluence?sessionVariables=default_storage_engine%3DInnoDB\&useSSL=false\&amp;\</property\>

\<property name="hibernate.connection.url"\>jdbc:mysql://localhost/confluence?sessionVariables=default_storage_engine%3DInnoDB?useSSL=false\</property\>

Both done in \<CONFLUENCE-DATA-DIR\>/confluence.cfg.xml


author: Tom Dickson
body: I have this:

\<property name="hibernate.connection.url"\>jdbc:mysql://10.10.10.10/confluence?autoReconnect=true\&amp;amp;sessionVariables=storage_engine%3DInnoDB\&amp;amp;useUnicode=true\&amp;amp;characterEncoding=utf8\</property\>


author: Tom Dickson
body: which doesn't work, ha!


author: Tom Dickson
body: \<property name="hibernate.connection.url"\>jdbc:mysql://10.10.10.10/confluence?useSSL=false\</property\>

seems to have silenced it ....


author: Aleksandr
body: Hello team! Still have the same issue. In the catalina.out logs have   

Tue Mar 22 10:50:26 UTC 2022 WARN: Establishing SSL connection without server's identity verification is not recommended. According to MySQL 5.5.45+, 5.6.26+ and 5.7.6+ requirements SSL connection must be established by default if explicit option isn't set. For compliance with existing applications not using SSL the verifyServerCertificate property is set to 'false'. You need either to explicitly disable SSL by setting useSSL=false, or set useSSL=true and provide truststore for server certificate verification.  

nevertheless in dbconfig.xml I have the next configuration:  

\<url\>jdbc:mysql://10.180.4.208/jiradb?useUnicode=true\&amp;useSSL=false\&amp;characterEncoding=UTF8\&amp;sessionVariables=default_storage_engine=InnoDB\</url\>  

comments: author: Tom Dickson
body: I got it to work by adding *skip_ssl* to mysqld.conf and setting my dbconfig.xml to:
>
> ```
> jdbc:mysql://address=(protocol=tcp)(host=localhost)(port=3306)/jira?allowPublicKeyRetrieval=true
> ```
>
> *** ** * ** ***
>
> ```
> jdbc:mysql://localhost/confluence?allowPublicKeyRetrieval=true
> ```


author: Walter Sunk
body: I wrote a JDBC Test Program:

```
public static final String MYSQL_URL_1 = "jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/confluence?" +                "useUnicode=true&amp;" +                "characterEncoding=utf8&amp;" +                "verifyServerCertificate=false&amp;" +                "useSSL=true&amp;" +                "requireSSL";public static final String MYSQL_URL_2 = "jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/confluence?" +                "useSSL=false&amp;" +                "useUnicode=true&amp;" +                "characterEncoding=utf8";public static final String MYSQL_URL_3 = "jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/confluence?" +                "useUnicode=true&amp;" +                "characterEncoding=utf8";public static void main(...){	Connection connection = DriverManager.getConnection(MYSQL_URL_1/2/3, MYSQL_USER, MYSQL_PW);}
```

```
MYSQL_URL_1 and MYSQL_URL_2 work
```

```
MYSQL_URL_3 creates the warning!
```

So it seems that Confluence or Tomcat do not parse the connection-String correctly. It seems that Confluence or Tomcat do not forward the useSSL parameter to JDBC!

Feedback on that welcome!


Tags: confluence-administration