ok, i guess i really don't understand how this works. i have a server (9.3 with all current patches) that i'm trying to do ip based vhosts with and ssl'ifying some of the vhosts. i have this host.org (192.168.1.100) host-devel.org (192.168.1.101) with virtual ips on the interfaces and the hosts/ip's registed in dns. if i don't ssl anything the vhosts work as expect. in /etc/apache2/vhosts.d i have host.conf host-devel.conf with appropriate syntax (at least it works and http -S says its ok). the webserver starts correctly and works as i expect. http://host.org/ gives me the space i expect as does host-devel.org. however, if i copy the vhost-ssl.template file to host-ssl.conf and configure it as: <VirtualHost 192.168.1.100:443> # General setup for the virtual host DocumentRoot "/srv/www/htdocs_main" ServerName host.org:443 #ServerAdmin webmaster@example.com ..... httpd2 -S -DSSL reports syntax ok but the server fails to start with rcapache2 startssl and in the error log i get: [Tue Jul 19 10:01:47 2005] [error] Server should be SSL-aware but has no certificate configured [Hint: SSLCertificateFile] i'm obviously missing something quite simple here, but i sure cannot see it. any sanity checking will be appreciated. -- michael