Coyote Point Systems E350GX, Installation And Administration Manual

Page: 287 / 344

Generating a Self-Signed Certificate
Equalizer Installation and Administration Guide 283
4. Once the CA returns your signed certificate (usually in email), go to the section “Preparing a Signed CA
Certificate for Installation” on page 283.
Generating a Self-Signed Certificate
To generate a self signed certificate in PEM format:
1. Generate a self-signed x509 format certificate by entering this command:
openssl req -new -x509 -newkey rsa:1024 -out selfcert.pem -days 1095
This creates a self-signed certificate ( selfcert.pem ) that will be valid for 1095 days (about three years) and also
generates a new private key to be output into a file named privkey.pem . The key length you use (1024 in this
example) can be any multiple of 8. If you already have a private key, use -key filename instead of -newkey
rsa:1024 to specify the file containing the private key. The key length you use (i.e., 1024 in this example) can
be any multiple of 8.
After generating the private key, the following prompts are displayed (example responses shown):
Enter PEM pass phrase: <password>
Verifying - Enter PEM pass phrase: <password>
Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]: US
State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]: New York
Locality Name (eg, city) []: Millerton
Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]: CPS Inc.
Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []: Engineering
Common Name (eg, YOUR name) []: myclient.example.com
Email Address []: admin@example.com
Depending on the tool you use to create the certificate, you may also be asked for a challenge password and
other optional information. Make sure you remember the
password (and, if prompted, the challenge password)
you specify, as you will need it to install the certificate.
The Common Name provided must be the DNS-resolvable fully qualified domain name (FQDN) used by the
Equalizer cluster. For a server certificate , when the client receives the certificate from the server, the browser
will display a warning if the Common Name does not match the hostname of the request URI. For a client
certificate , the Common Name in the client’s copy of the certificate is only compared to the Common Name in
the copy on the server, so this can be any value.
2. Combine the private key and certificate into one file, using a command like the following:
cat selfcert.pem privkey.pem > clustercert.pem
3. You can now install your self signed certificate and private key file, clustercert.pem , on Equalizer and your
clients, as appropriate.
Preparing a Signed CA Certificate for Installation
When you receive your signed certificate back from your CA, you’ll get one or more .pem files in return, or you’ll
get one or more mail messages from the CA. The files or messages contain your signed certificate and any necessary
intermediate certificates required by the CA’s chain of trust.
If you get your certificates in the mail, save each one to an ASCII text file with a .pem extension. Make sure you use
a text editor such as Notepad (Windows) or vi (Unix/Linux) to save the files as text files.
Note that if you are using IIS, see the section “Using IIS with Equalizer” on page 286.
If you get only one certificate (the signed server certificate) from your CA, then: