Technically an IP address is valid in a certificate, but you won't find any CA signing a certificate with an IP address in it and as you said a single IP can, and usually does, host more than one domain. I have done it for local development before (Nginx, not Apache).That is true.It appears there's no way to have a SSL working certificate for raw IP adress....
For one thing, a large web site can be using more than one IP address (for load balancing among other things), and an IP address can host more than one web site.
So the SSL Cert applies to the FQDN (or a wildcard for a domain like *.example.com).
I can't remember if the OP specified if they want just them to be able to access the server from anywhere or if they want everyone on the net to be able to but if it's just the OP then they can use a self signed certificate with an IP address or if they are in control of their systems DNS lookups just make up a FQDN (just not using any actual domain extensions) and have their hosts file or private DNS server point to it. They'll want to do the self signed route correctly though and create their own Certificate Authority to sign the leaf certificate etc but I fear this may be too complicated for them.
Statistics: Posted by jarpf — Mon Feb 10, 2025 11:27 am