$ openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:1024 -keyout mykey.key -out mycert.cert
- openssl: This is the basic command line tool for creating and managing OpenSSL certificates, keys, and other files.
- req: This subcommand specifies that we want to use X.509 certificate signing request (CSR) management. The "X.509" is a public key infrastructure standard that SSL and TLS adheres to for its key and certificate management. We want to create a new X.509 cert, so we are using this subcommand.
- -x509: This further modifies the previous subcommand by telling the utility that we want to make a self-signed certificate instead of generating a certificate signing request, as would normally happen.
- -nodes: This tells OpenSSL to skip the option to secure our certificate with a passphrase. We need Nginx to be able to read the file, without user intervention, when the server starts up. A passphrase would prevent this from happening because we would have to enter it after every restart.
- **-days **365: This option sets the length of time that the certificate will be considered valid. We set it for one year here.
- **-newkey **rsa:2048: This specifies that we want to generate a new certificate and a new key at the same time. We did not create the key that is required to sign the certificate in a previous step, so we need to create it along with the certificate. The rsa:2048 portion tells it to make an RSA key that is 2048 bits long.
- -keyout: This line tells OpenSSL where to place the generated private key file that we are creating.
- -out: This tells OpenSSL where to place the certificate that we are creating.
Prompts Example:
Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]: US
State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]: New York
Locality Name (eg, city) []: New York City
Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]: Bouncy Castles, Inc.
Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []: Ministry of Water Slides
Common Name (e.g. server FQDN or YOUR name) []: server_IP_address
Email Address []: admin@your_domain.comThe certificate files should be placed in the appropriate folder:
/etc/ssl