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(This post is getting updated as I use things and need to be able to find things easier)

Generate a new private key (but no x509 public cert yet):-

openssl genrsa -aes128 -out selfsignedprivkey.key 2048

And then generate the public certificate to go with it:-

openssl req -new -x509 -days 7300 -key selfsignedprivkey.key -out selfsignedpubkey.cer

To convert from a pkcs12 key (sometimes called a .pfx file) to an OpenSSL key without a password to protect it:-

openssl pkcs12 -in file.p12 -out file.pem -nodes

(Handy for various open source servers that don't take pcks12 keys or use CryptoAPI on Windows, including stunnel, openvpn, hmailserver 5, webmin/apache, etc - omit -nodes if the system you are exporting for supports passwords on the private key.)

The converse when using OpenSSL to make a pkcs12 bundle is:-

openssl pkcs12 -export -inkey privkey.pem -in pubcert.cer -out combined.p12

And make a new certificate request:-

openssl req -new -out request.txt

And then there's sign certificate requests with the above key (assuming you edited your openssl.cfg file to point to certificates and keys that could have been generated above):-

openssl ca -in request.txt -out response.cer

The response is effectively the public certificate for the key file saved during the request generation, just use the two as-is.  To use the cert and key you just generated in windows, use the pkcs12 -export line above.

Note that if you want to sign request that include details of the subjectAltName (for multiple hostnames or e-mail addresses for example) then you need to make sure that "copy_extensions = copy" is not commented out in the openssl.cfg file.  If you do this though watch out, someone can make themselves a sub-CA with their certificate then if you don't check every request carefully.

And finally make a CRL for it (you should edit the openssl.cfg file to set the location of this on certificates prior to signing any requests as it's included in the certificate - use crlDistributionPoints = URI:http://www.yourdomain.net/ca-crl.crl in addition to nsCaRevocationUrl  = http://www.yourdomain.net/ca-crl.crl as otherwise windows won't think there is one there):-

openssl ca -gencrl -out mycrl.crl

Other things to note when using OpenSSL CA mode: index.txt needs to be completely empty, the serial needs to have 01 and a carriage return line feed ( echo 01>serial ) and you need to create crlnumber as being 01.

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