Generate a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) -
IBM HTTP Server

To generate a CSR, you first need to create a key pair for your server. These two items are a digital certificate key pair and cannot be separated. If you lose your public/private key file or your password and generate a new one, your SSL Certificate will no longer match your private key. You will have to request a new SSL Certificate.

The CSR needs to contain the following attributes:

- Country Name (C): Use the two-letter code without punctuation for country, for example: US or CA.
- State or Province (S): Spell out the state completely; do not abbreviate the state or province name, for example: California.
- Locality or City (L): The Locality field is the city or town name, for example: Berkeley.
- Organization (O): If your company or department has an &, @, or any other symbol using the shift key in its name, you must spell out the symbol or omit it to enroll, for example: XY & Z Corporation would be XYZ Corportation or XY and Z Corportation.
- Organizational Unit (OU): This field is the name of the department or organization unit making the request.
- Common Name (CN): The Common Name is the Host + Domain Name. It looks like "www.company.com" or "company.com".

Note: SSL certificates can only be used on Web servers using the Common Name specified during enrollment. For example, a certificate for the domain "domain.com" will receive a warning if accessing a site named "www.domain.com" or "secure.domain.com", because "www.domain.com" and "secure.domain.com" are different from "domain.com".

We recommend that you contact for IBM additional information.

Generate a Key Pair and CSR

1. This utility comes with the OpenSSL package. You usually install it under /usr/local/ssl/bin. (If you have installed openssl elsewhere you will need to adjust these instructions appropriately).
2. Generate a private key using the following command:  openssl genrsa -des3 2048 > verisign.key
   Note: For Extended Validation certificates the key bit length must be 2048.

Step 2: Generate a Certificate Signing Request (CSR)

1. Change directory to your SSL Certificate directory: cd /usr/local/ssl/crt
2. Generate a CSR using the following command:  
   openssl req -new -key ./verisign.key > verisign.csr  
   You have just created a key pair and a CSR.
3. To copy and paste the information into the enrollment form, open the file verisign.csr in a text editor that does not add extra characters (Notepad or vi are recommended).
4. Paste the information into the enrollment form when prompted for the CSR.