openssl

[ombra]

Good morning all!

Does anyone know what is involved in seting up openssl? I just downloaded the source, compiled and installed it but am a little unsure of what to do next.

I just wiped my hd and did a fresh install of just the bare essentials of slack. If I am going to run linux, I may as well learn as much about it as I can right??

Thanks in advance.

[Craig McPherson]

I'm not an openssl expert, but I'll field this question as best I can. What exactly do you want to do with it? Openssl doesn't really do anything by itself; it's mainly for generating SSL certificates to use with SSL services and functioning as a library and support program for SSL services. What are you planning to do with regards to SSL? If you want to set up an SSL webserver, you'll need to configure Apache for SSL, which will include using openssl to generate the certificates. Want to set up pop3-ssl? You'll need to install an SSL-capable pop3 daemon. Without knowing what you want to do, it's hard to answer.

[ombra]

I am thinking ssl is responsible for generating private keys to use in any secure communication. My question I guess is how do I go about doing that. I have read various how-to's and the man pages but I am a little confused as to how to do this.

Here is what I want to use openssl for:

1. Apache
2. ssh
3. VNC

I probably won't be using it much with apache but I would like to have it there for future use.

The main purpose is for secure remote administration.

Thanks for your reply Craig.

[Craig McPherson]

You should look at this thread here:
http://www.linuxnewbie.org/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=13&t=004544

Mr. Freebsd explained to me how to create a new certificate. Here's the example he gave:

/path/to/openssl req -new -x509 -keyout /path/to/serverkey.pem -out /path/to/servercert.pem -days 365

I also wanted to create keys that were larger than the default, and I looked up how to do that in the manpage, but I don't remember offhand what the option was. It's in the manpage.