Create a Self-Signed Certificate
A self-signed certificate is both the certificate and the trusted CA certificate with which it is validated. Self-signed certificates are commonly used when certificates are deployed internally within an organization.
The commands in this procedure are only examples. For more information, consult the OpenSSL documentation (http://www.openssl.org/).
-
Optionally, edit an OpenSSL default
configuration file, openssl.cnf.
This sets the default values provided in the prompts used to gather information for a certificate, such as the common name, country code, state or province, locality, organization, and so on. You can edit this file to make certificate generation easier and more consistent.
Note: You can download a sample openssl.cnf file from a number of web sites. - Generate a private key. For more information, see Generate a Private Key for Use with Certificates .
-
Generate a certificate-signing request. For
example:
openssl req -new -config openssl.cnf -key server.keypw -out server.csr
You will be prompted for information such as a country code, state or province, locality, organization, and also the common name.
The command generates an unsigned certificate called server.csr, which now needs to be signed.
-
Optionally, remove the pass phrase from the
key so that it does not need to be specified when configuring the Uniface TLS connector.
- To remove the pass phrase from an RSA
key:
openssl rsa -in server.keypw -out server.key
- To remove the pass phrase from an DSA
key:
openssl dsa -in server.keypw -out server.key
- To remove the pass phrase from an RSA
key:
-
Sign the certificate generated in step 3.
For example:
openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in server.csr -signkey server.key -out server.crt
You can use the self-signed certificate for server verification or for client verification.
Generating and Signing a Certificate in One Step
For clarity, the previous procedure describes how to create a self-signed certificate in a sequence of steps, but you could also generate and sign a certificate in single command.
For example, to create a certificate that uses SHA356 encryption and expires after 365 days:
openssl req -new -x509 -key server.key -sha256 -days 365 -out server.crt -config openssl.cnf