The server is 7.x. Okay. I'll try it again, but the last time I tried configuring the web server, from webconfig, using a certificate/intermediate/key that I uploaded to the server, it took me an hour to get httpd working well enough just to get back into webconfig. I think I'll wait until an evening when not many people will be checking their email. I'll report the progress.

In 7.x, certificates work well now with the Web Server and the Webconfig and Flexshares have the same functionality but I've never used it. Even better is that you can use the free Let's Encrypt certificates. Each of the three apps above have a dropdown box in its configuration allowing you to choose from the default certificates, any imported ones or any Let's Encrypt ones. Have a look at those and see if they fit the bill. If you use Let's Encrypt ones, ClearOS also takes care of their automatic renewal.

There is also a howto for using Let's Encrypt certificates for mail apps. The methodology can almost certainly easily be extended to cover things like the FTP server and I'm happy to add the details to the howto so it covers more than mail apps if anyone tells me what to add.

If you're still on 6.x then I think you are out of luck

Sorry. I should have posted the solution when I figured it out, but this brings me to another problem that I've never been able to resolve in a manner that I would consider "proper".

First, the error the flexshare Web problem was caused because I had set the immutable attribute on the file /etc/httpd/conf.d/flex-443.conf file. (attrib +i /etc/httpd/conf.d/flex-443.conf) The reason that I set the attribute is because webconfig was changing the file, sometimes at times outside of my control, and breaking our certificate chain. The reason I am setting a web flexshare is that I have a user on the system who wants to be able to copy files form a windows machine, to a samba share on the server, and have those files shared with the world for download. The flexshare (samba and web) is easy and works actually really well.

That brings me to the second problem that caused me to set the immutable attribute. I have spoken with ClearOS engineers as well as other users, and I can't find anyone who has "real" certificates working that were configured through the certificate manager webconfig. Sure, quite a few have done what I have done and manually added the cert-chain-key files to the configurations of various components (httpd, proftpd, etc.) but the webconfig just won't work. Additionally, webconfig overwrites those files periodically and breaks the certificates, requiring more manual repairs.

Are you doing this through the webconfig? Can you check the permissions on /var/tmp with "ls -ld /var/tmp"? You should get something like:

ls -ld /var/tmp

drwxrwxrwt. 14 root root 4096 Mar 28 06:02 /var/tmp

Note the "t" at the end of the permissions.

Can I ask why you are setting up a web flexshare? I don't think they are so common these days with people normally using Web Sites instead. These also leverage the flexshare concept and look like they use flexshare locations, but in reality they use bind mounts and all their files go under /var/www/virtual.