How to Generate a CSR for IBM HTTP Server

You will need to create a key pair for your server to generate a CSR. These two items are a digital certificate key pair and must not be separated. Losing your public/private key file or password will result in you havinf to generate a new one, causing your SSL Certificate to no longer match. You will have to order a new SSL Certificate and which may result in a charge.

The CSR needs to contain the following attributes:

Country Name (C): Use the two-letter code without punctuation for country, for example: US or CA.
State or Province (S): Spell out the state completely; do not abbreviate the state or province name, for example: California.
Locality or City (L): The Locality field is the city or town name, for example: Berkeley.
Organization (O): If your company or department has an &, @, or any other symbol using the shift key in its name, you must spell out the symbol or omit it to enroll, for example: XY & Z Corporation would be XYZ Corportation or XY and Z Corportation.
Organizational Unit (OU): This field is the name of the department or organization unit making the request.
Common Name (CN): The Common Name is the Host + Domain Name. It looks like "www.company.com"or "company.com".

Note:SSL certificates can only be used on Web servers using the Common Name specified during enrollment. For example, a certificate for the domain "domain.com"will receive a warning if accessing a site named "www.domain.com"or "secure.domain.com", because "www.domain.com"and "secure.domain.com"are different from "domain.com".

Step 1: Generate a keypair

  1. Use the utility "openssl" to generate the key and CSR. This utility comes with the OpenSSL package. You usually install it under /usr/local/ssl/bin. (If you have installed openssl elsewhere you will need to adjust these instructions appropriately).
  2. Generate a private key using the following command:  openssl genrsa -des3 2048 > verisign.key
Step 2: Generate a Certificate Signing Request (CSR)

  1. Change directory to your SSL Certificate directory: cd /usr/local/ssl/crt

  2. Generate a CSR using the following command:  
    openssl req -new -key ./verisign.key > verisign.csr  

  3. Verify your CSR

  4. To copy and paste the information into the enrollment form, open the file verisign.csr in a text editor that does not add extra characters (Notepad or vi are recommended).

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