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dotancohen
Asked: 2014-12-09 07:03:53 +0800 CST

Non-interactive creation of SSL certificate requests

  • 772

Is there a way to create SSL cert requests by specifying all the required parameters on the initial command? I am writing a CLI-based web server control panel and I would like to avoid the use of expect when executing openssl if possible.

This is a typical way to create a cert request:

$ openssl req -new -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -sha256 -keyout foobar.com.key -out foobar.com.csr
Generating a 2048 bit RSA private key
.................................................+++
........................................+++
writing new private key to 'foobar.com.key'
-----
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]:New Sweden
Locality Name (eg, city) []:Stockholm
Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]:Scandanavian Ventures, Inc.
Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:
Common Name (e.g. server FQDN or YOUR name) []:foobar.com
Email Address []:[email protected]

Please enter the following 'extra' attributes
to be sent with your certificate request
A challenge password []:
An optional company name []:FooBar

I am hoping to see something like this: (unworking example)

$ openssl req -new -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -sha256 -keyout foobar.com.key -out foobar.com.csr \
-Country US \
-State "New Sweden" \
-Locality Stockholm \
-Organization "Scandanavian Ventures, Inc." \
-CommonName  foobar.com \
-EmailAddress [email protected] \
-Company FooBar

The fine man page had nothing to say on the matter, nor was I able to find anything via Google. Must SSL cert request generation be an interactive process, or is there some way to specify all the parameters in a single command?

This is on a Debian-derived Linux distro running openssl 1.0.1.

linux

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    you are missing two part:

    the subject line, which can be called as

    -subj "/C=US/ST=New Sweden/L=Stockholm /O=.../OU=.../CN=.../emailAddress=..."
    • replacing ... with value, X= being X509 code (Organisation/OrganisationUnit/etc ... )

    the password value, which can be called as

    -passout pass:client11
-passin  pass:client11
    • which give an output/input password

    my calling for new key looks like

    openssl genrsa -aes256 -out lib/client1.key -passout pass:client11 1024
openssl rsa -in lib/client1.key -passin pass:client11 -out lib/client1-nokey.key

openssl req -new -key lib/client1.key -subj req -new \
    -passin pass:client11 -out lib/client1.csr \
    -subj "/C=US/ST=New Sweden/L=Stockholm/O=.../OU=.../CN=.../emailAddress=..."

    (now that I see it, there is two -new ... )

    • 27

  2. I append to my regular openssl command:

    openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 7300 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout /etc/ssl/private/key.pem -out /etc/ssl/private/cert.pem

    This line:

    -subj "/C=PE/ST=Lima/L=Lima/O=Acme Inc. /OU=IT Department/CN=acme.com"

    Description:

    • Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]:PE
    • State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]:Lima
    • Locality Name (eg, city) []:Lima
    • Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]:Acme Inc.
    • Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:IT Department
    • Common Name (e.g. server FQDN or YOUR name) []:acme.com

    Use "/" like separator.

    • 7

  3. Check for -batch option as described in the official docs.

    • 3