This is a fairly complicated part of Local that to be honest, I don’t 100% understand. Also, I’ve never used MainWP, but as I understand it, it’s a tool that allows you to administer multiple WordPress sites from one central place – is that correct?
If so, how is the main controller/admin functionality implemented? Is it a plugin that needs to be installed on a WordPress site? Also I’m guessing that each individual “secondary” site needs some sort of worker plugin – is that correct?
In terms of what I know from reading through these symptoms, here are some observations:
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The “Trust” ssl cert in Local is just registering the site’s SSL certificate with the dev machine’s browsers so that the browsers can make a secure connection from the browser to the Local site.
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Note that the red “error” in the wp-admin isn’t actually an error, it’s a warning (nitpicky, I know, and the warning is likely a symptom of the underlying issue)
Warning: openssl_pkey_export(): cannot get key from...
In similar issues that I’ve seen, this has to do with WordPress not being able to make a secure connection over HTTPS with some other external service.
In this case, since MainWP is probably trying to reach out and create a secure connection to a remote site, it’s probably having issues creating that secure connection. Since Local’s “Trust” button is registering the certificate with the browsers, this isn’t what the WordPress site is using to make a secure, remote connection, so for some reason, MainWP isn’t able to communicate with whatever it’s trying to communicate with.
Maybe this is a dumb question on my part, but here goes: Does MainWP allow you to use it in an offline environment? @afragen, you mention that it works for you – what exactly is working? Are you making secure connections and managing external sites with the MainWP plugin?