20.8. Creating a Self-Signed Certificate

You can create your own self-signed certificate. Note that a self-signed certificate does not provide the security guarantees of a CA-signed certificate. See Section 20.5 Types of Certificates for more details about certificates.

If you would like to make your own self-signed certificate, you will first need to create a random key using the instructions provided in Section 20.6 Generating a Key. Once you have a key, make sure you are in the /usr/share/ssl/certs directory, and type the following command:

make testcert

You will see the following output, and you will be prompted for your passphrase (unless you generated a key without a passphrase):

umask 77 ; \
/usr/bin/openssl req -new -key /etc/httpd/conf/ssl.key/server.key 
-x509 -days 365 -out /etc/httpd/conf/ssl.crt/server.crt
Using configuration from /usr/share/ssl/openssl.cnf
Enter PEM pass phrase:

After you enter your passphrase (or without a prompt if you created a key without a passphrase), you will be asked for more information. The computer's output and a set of inputs looks like the following (you will need to provide the correct information for your organization and host):

You are about to be asked to enter information that will be incorporated
into your certificate request.
What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a
DN.
There are quite a few fields but you can leave some blank
For some fields there will be a default value,
If you enter '.', the field will be left blank.
-----
Country Name (2 letter code) [GB]:US      
State or Province Name (full name) [Berkshire]:North Carolina
Locality Name (eg, city) [Newbury]:Raleigh
Organization Name (eg, company) [My Company Ltd]:My Company, Inc.
Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:Documentation
Common Name (your name or server's hostname) []:myhost.example.com
Email Address []:myemail@example.com

After you provide the correct information, a self-signed certificate will be created in /etc/httpd/conf/ssl.crt/server.crt. You will need to restart your secure server after generating the certificate with following the command:

/sbin/service httpd restart