[plug] ssl, certificates, authotities etc

[Luke Dudney]

Steve Boak wrote:

>My brain is full :-)
>
>Can anyone point me to human readable documentation on how to set up my own 
>ssl certificates and how to get them signed? I have googled and read lots, 
>but I am now more confused about the whole thing than when I started.
>
>Steve
>
>  
>

The openssl distribution comes bundled with a wrapper to "openssl ca" 
called CA.pl (or just "CA" in the redhat distribution). On my FC2 
desktop this is located in /usr/share/ssl/misc/CA

It's not a huge improvement over using "openssl ca", but it does provide 
an automated and fairly easy follow-the-steps frontend to creating and 
managing your own CA, generating certificate requests, creating 
self-signed certificates, signing CSRs etc. It might also be helpful in 
making apparent what you didn't know you were after in the first place. 
See the ca(1) man page for some further help.

Cheers
Luke