Generate a certificate signing request
- Generate Csr Openssl
- Openssl Generate Csr San
- Openssl Generate Csr 2048 Key Free
- Openssl Generate Key From Csr
Sep 12, 2014 openssl req -key domain.key -new -out domain.csr. Answer the CSR information prompt to complete the process. The -key option specifies an existing private key (domain.key) that will be used to generate a new CSR. The -new option indicates that a CSR is being generated. Generate a CSR from an Existing Certificate and Private Key.
One of the most versatile SSL tools is OpenSSL which is an open source implementation of the SSL protocol. There are versions of OpenSSL for nearly every platform, including Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. OpenSSL is commonly used to create the CSR and private key for many different platforms, including Apache. However, it also has hundreds of different functions that allow you to view the. Generate a CSR & Private Key: openssl req -out CSR.csr -new -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout privatekey.key To generate a 4096-bit CSR you can replace the rsa:2048 syntax with rsa:4096 as shown below. Both examples show how to create CSR using OpenSSL non-interactively (without being prompted for subject), so you can use them in any shell scripts. Create CSR and Key Without Prompt using OpenSSL. Use the following command to create a new private key 2048 bits in size example.key and generate CSR example.csr from it.
Before you can install a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate, you must first generate a certificate signing request (CSR). You can do this by using one of the following methods:
OpenSSL
The following sections describe how to use OpenSSL to generate a CSR for a single host name. If you want to generate a CSR for multiple host names, we recommend using the Cloud Control Panel or the MyRackspace Portal.
Install OpenSSL
Check whether OpenSSL is installed by using the following command:
- CentOS® and Red Hat® Enterprise Linux®The following output provides an example of what the command returns:
- Debian® and the Ubuntu® operating systemThe following output provides an example of what the command returns:
If the preceding packages are not returned, install OpenSSL by running the following command:
- CentOS and Red Hat
- Debian and the Ubuntu operating system
Generate the RSA key
Run the following commands to create a directory in which to store your RSA key, substituting a directory name of your choice:
Run the following command to generate a private key:
Create a CSR
Run the following command to create a CSR with the RSA private key (output is in Privacy-Enhanced Mail (PEM) format):
When prompted, enter the necessary information for creating a CSR by using the conventions shown in the following table.
Note: You cannot use the following characters in the Organization Name or Organizational Unit fields:
< > ~ ! @ # $ % ^ * / ( ) ? . , &
Field | Explanation | Example |
---|---|---|
Common Name | The fully qualified domain name to which the certificate applies. The domain names example.com and www.example.com are distinct from each other, so be sure to submit your request for the right domain. If you are purchasing a wildcard certificate, use *.example.com. | example.com |
Organization Name | The exact legal name of your organization. The Certificate Authority (CA) might seek to confirm that your organization is real and legally registered, so don’t abbreviate words that aren’t abbreviated in the organization’s legal name. | Example Inc. |
Organizational Unit | The branch of your organization that is making the request. | Marketing |
City/locality | The city where your organization is legally located. Do not abbreviate the city name. | San Antonio |
State/province | The state or province where your organization is legally located. Do not abbreviate the state or province name. | Texas |
Country/region | The two-letter International Standards Organization (ISO) abbreviation for your country. | US |
Warning: Leave the challenge password blank (press Enter).
Verify your CSR
Run the following command to verify your CSR:
After you have verified your CSR, you can submit it to a CA to purchase an SSL certificate.
Windows IIS Manager
Use the following steps to generate a CSR by using Windows IIS Manager:
Note: The following steps are for IIS 8 or IIS 8.5 on Windows Server 2012.
- Open IIS Manager.
- In the left-hand Connections pane, click the server for which you want to generate a CSR.
- In the center server Home pane under the IIS section, double-click Server Certificates.
- In the right-hand Actions pane, click Create Certificate Request.
- In the Request Certificate wizard, on the Distinguished Name Properties page, enter the following information and then click Next.
Field Explanation Example Common Name The fully qualified domain name to which the certificate applies. The domain names example.com and www.example.com are distinct from each other, so be sure to submit your request for the right domain. If you are purchasing a wildcard certificate, use *.example.com. example.com Organization Name The exact legal name of your organization. The CA might seek to confirm that your organization is real and legally registered, so don’t abbreviate words that aren’t abbreviated in the organization’s legal name. Example Inc. Organizational Unit The branch of your organization that is making the request. Marketing City/locality The city where your organization is legally located. Do not abbreviate the city name. San Antonio State/province The state or province where your organization is legally located. Do not abbreviate the state or province name. Texas Country/region The two-letter ISO abbreviation for your country. US - On the Cryptographic Server Provider Properties page, enter the following information and then click Next.
- Cryptographic service provider: Unless you have a specific cryptographic provider, use the default selection.
- Bit length: 2048 is the recommended bit length.
- On the File Name page, enter the location where you want to save the certificate request file and then click Finish.
After you have generated the CSR, you can submit it to a CA to purchase an SSL certificate.
Cloud Control Panel
Rackspace provides the CSR Generator for generating a CSR. The CSR Generator shows you the CSRs that you currently have and lets you create new CSRs with a simple form. After you have entered your details, the generator combines them with your private key so that you can submit the combined encoded information to a CA.
When you are done with the generator, you can return to the Cloud Control Panel by clicking any of the links in the top navigation or by going to login.rackspace.com and selecting Rackspace Cloud from the drop-down product menu in the top navigation bar.
Access the CSR Generator
Access the CSR Generator directly or through the Control Panel by using the following steps:
- Log in to the Cloud Control Panel and select Rackspace Cloud from the drop-down product menu in the top navigation bar.
- In the top navigation bar, click Servers > Cloud Servers.
- Click the name of the server for which you want to generate a CSR.
- In the right-hand Managing Your Server section under Help me with, click Generate a CSR.
The generator lists your existing CSRs, if you have any, organized by domain name.
Generate a CSR
- Click Create CSR.
- Enter the following information, which will be associated with the CSR:
Field Explanation Example Domain Name The fully qualified domain name to which the certificate applies. The domain names example.com and www.example.com are distinct from each other, so be sure to submit your request for the right domain. If you want to secure both domains, you can use the Alt Names field. If you are purchasing a wildcard certificate, use *.example.com. example.com Alt Names (Optional) Additional domains that you want to add to the request. Each CA treats these differently, and the CA might charge for additional names. You can submit a comma-separated list. www.example.com, secure.example.com Email Address (Optional) A contact email address for the certificate. [email protected] Organization Name The exact legal name of your organization. The CA might seek to confirm that your organization is real and legally registered, so don’t abbreviate words that aren’t abbreviated in the organization’s legal name. Example Inc. Organizational Unit (Optional) The branch of your organization that is making the request. Marketing City The city where your organization is legally located. Do not abbreviate the city name. San Antonio State or Province The state or province where your organization is legally located. Do not abbreviate the state or province name. Texas Country Choose your country from the drop-down menu. The two-letter ISO abbreviation for your country is included in the CSR. United States Private Key Bit Length Key sizes smaller than 2048 are considered insecure and might not be accepted by a CA. 1024,2048,4096 Hashing Algorithm Both algorithms are currently trusted in mainstream browsers and offer industry recommended security. SHA-512 requires additional CPU processing. SHA-256, SHA-512 Note: You cannot use the following characters in the Organization Name or Organizational Unit fields:< > ~ ! @ # $ % ^ * / ( ) ? . , &
- After you have entered all the required information, click Create CSR.
It can take between 5 and 60 seconds for the CSR to be generated. You might need to refresh the page that displays your CSRs before the new CSR is listed.
View CSR details
When CSR has been generated, you can click its UUID (unique identifier) in the CSR list to view its details screen.
This screen displays the information that you provided, the text of the CSR, and its associated private key.
Submit the CSR to the CA
The text in the Certificate Request field is the CSR. It contains encoded details of the CSR and your public key.
To request your SSL certificate, copy the Certificate Request text and submit it to your CA. Include all the text, including the BEGIN and END lines at the beginning and end of the text block.
Install the private key
Copy the private key to the server that will host the certificate. See your application documentation to determine where to install the private key and certificate on your server.
MyRackspace Portal
If you are a Managed or Dedicated customer, you can request a CSR through the MyRackspace Portal by using the following steps:
- Log in to the MyRackspace Portal and select Dedicated Hosting from the drop-down product menu in the top navigation bar.
- In the top navigation bar, click Tickets > Create Ticket.
- On the Tickets / Create New Ticket page, select Generate Certificate Signing Request (CSR) from the Subject drop-down list.
- Enter the following information in the Ticket Details section:
Field Explanation Example Device(s) The server or servers for which you want to generate a CSR. Use the drop-down menu to select your servers. Common Name The fully qualified domain name to which the certificate applies. The domain names example.com and www.example.com are distinct from each other, so be sure to submit your request for the right domain. If you want to secure both domains, you can use the Alt Names field. If you are purchasing a wildcard certificate, use *.example.com. example.com Alt. Names (Optional) Additional domains that you want to add to the request. Each CA treats these differently, and the CA might charge for additional names. You can submit a comma-separated list. www.example.com, secure.example.com Email Address (Optional) A contact email address for the certificate. [email protected] Organization The exact legal name of your organization. The CA might seek to confirm that your organization is real and legally registered, so don’t abbreviate words that aren’t abbreviated in the organization’s legal name. Example Inc. Organizational Unit (Optional) The branch of your organization that is making the request. Marketing Locality (City) The city where your organization is legally located. Do not abbreviate the city name. San Antonio State or Province Name The state or province where your organization is legally located. Do not abbreviate the state or province name. Texas Country Choose your country from the drop-down menu. The two-letter ISO abbreviation for your country is included in the CSR. United States Note: The bit length is automatically set to 2048. - Click Create Ticket.
Next steps
Reference
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OpenSSL
OpenSSL is a CLI (Command Line Tool) which can be used to secure the server to generate public key infrastructure (PKI) and HTTPS. This article helps you as a quick reference to understand OpenSSL commands which are very useful in common, and for everyday scenarios especially for system administrators.
Certificate Signing Requests (CSRs)
If we want to obtain SSL certificate from a certificate authority (CA), we must generate a certificate signing request (CSR). A CSR consists of mainly the public key of a key pair, and some additional information. Both these components are merged into the certificate whenever we are signing for the CSR.
While generating a CSR, the system will prompt for information regarding the certificate and this information is called as Distinguished Name (DN). The important field in the DN is the Common Name (CN) which should be the FQND (Fully Qualified Domain Name) of the server or the host where we intend to use the certificate with.
The next item in a DN is to provide the additional information about our business or organization. If we purchase an SSL certificate from a certificate authority (CA), it is very important and required that these additional fields like “Organization” should reflect your organization for details.
Here is a general example for the CSR information prompt, when we run the OpenSSL command to generate the CSR.
We can also provide the information by non-interactive answers for the CSR information generation, we can do this by adding the –subj option to any OpenSSL commands that we try to generate or run.
Below is an example for the –subj option where we can provide the information of the organization where we want to use this CSR.
Generating CSRs
In this section, we will cover about OpenSSL commands which are related to generating the CSR. This CSR can be used to request an SSL certificate from a certificate authority.
Generate a Private Key and a CSR
If we want to use HTTPS (HTTP over TLS) to secure the Apache or Nginx web servers (using a Certificate Authority (CA) to issue the SSL certificate). Also, the ‘.CSR’ which we will be generating has to be sent to a CA for requesting the certificate for obtaining CA-signed SSL.
Below is the command to create a 2048-bit private key for ‘domain.key’ and a CSR ‘domain.csr’ from the scratch.
The ‘–newkey rsa:2048’ is the option which we are specifying that the key should be 2048-bit using the RSA algorithm. The ’ –nodes’ option is to specifying that the private key should not be encrypted with a pass phrase. The ‘-new’ option, indicates that a CSR is being generated.
Generate a CSR from an Existing Private Key
Here we will learn about, how to generate a CSR for which you have the private key.
Below is the command to create a new .csr file based on the private key which we already have.
Generate Csr Openssl
Generate a CSR from an Existing Certificate and Private key
Here we can generate or renew an existing certificate where we miss the CSR file due to some reason. Here, the CSR will extract the information using the .CRT file which we have.
Below is the example for generating –
Where -x509toreq is specified that we are using the x509 certificate files to make a CSR.
Generating a Self-Singed Certificates
Here we will generate the Certificate to secure the web server where we use the self-signed certificate to use for development and testing purpose.
Openssl Generate Csr San
Here, we generate self-signed certificate using –x509 option, we can generate certificates with a validity of 365 days using –days 365 and a temporary .CSR files are generated using the above information.
Viewing the Certificates Files
Please note that, CSR files are encoded with .PEM format (which is not readable by the humans). This is required to view a certificate. In this section, we can cover the OpenSSL commands which are encoded with .PEM files.
Viewing CSR Files Entires
Openssl Generate Csr 2048 Key Free
The below command will be used to view the contents of the .CRT files Ex (domain.crt) in the plain text format.
Working with Private Keys
In this section, will see how to use OpenSSL commands that are specific to creating and verifying the private keys.
Openssl Generate Key From Csr
Create a Private Key
Below is the command to create a password-protected and, 2048-bit encrypted private key file (ex. domain.key) –
Enter a password when prompted to complete the process.
Verify a Private Key
Below is the command to check that a private key which we have generated (ex: domain.key) is a valid key or not
If the private key is encrypted, you will be prompted to enter the pass phrase. Upon the successful entry, the unencrypted key will be the output on the terminal.
In this article, we have learnt some commands and usage of OpenSSL commands which deals with SSL certificates where the OpenSSL has lots of features. We will learn more features and usage in the future. I hope this article will help us to understand some basic features of the OpenSSL.