Creating a Self-Signed Certificate

You can create your own self-signed certificate. Please note that a self-signed certificate will not provide the security guarantees provided by a CA-signed certificate. See the section called Types of Certificates for more details about certificates.

If you'd like to make your own self-signed certificate, you'll first need to create a random key using the instructions provided in the section called Generating a Key. Once you have a key, use the following command:

make testcert

You'll see the following output and you'll be prompted for your password (unless you generated a key without a password):

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 password (or without a prompt if you created a key without a password), you'll be asked for more information. The computer's output and a set of inputs looks like the following (you'll 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) [AU]:US      
State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]:North Carolina
Locality Name (eg, city) []:Durham
Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]:My Company, Inc.
Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:Documentation
Common Name (eg, your name or your server's hostname) []:myhost.mydomain.com
Email Address []:myemail@mydomain.com

After you provide the correct information, a self-signed certificate will be created and placed in /etc/httpd/conf/ssl.crt/server.crt. You'll need to re-start your secure server after generating the certificate. See the section called Starting and Stopping Apache for instructions on stopping and starting your secure Web server.