Extend the HOWTO on creating certificates, and add a HOWTO in creating keys.

PR: 422

diff --git a/doc/HOWTO/certificates.txt b/doc/HOWTO/certificates.txt
index 88048645dbefa736ce6fa8c67385ab2fc69fb709..82166e0dc23e5a66c28ca5e9ed229d65b2d20b48 100644 (file)
--- a/doc/HOWTO/certificates.txt
+++ b/doc/HOWTO/certificates.txt
@@ -1,6 +1,8 @@
 <DRAFT!>
                        HOWTO certificates
 
+1. Introduction
+
 How you handle certificates depend a great deal on what your role is.
 Your role can be one or several of:
 
@@ -13,12 +15,14 @@ Certificate authorities should read ca.txt.
 
 In all the cases shown below, the standard configuration file, as
 compiled into openssl, will be used.  You may find it in /etc/,
-/usr/local/ssr/ or somewhere else.  The name is openssl.cnf, and
+/usr/local/ssl/ or somewhere else.  The name is openssl.cnf, and
 is better described in another HOWTO <config.txt?>.  If you want to
 use a different configuration file, use the argument '-config {file}'
 with the command shown below.
 
 
+2. Relationship with keys
+
 Certificates are related to public key cryptography by containing a
 public key.  To be useful, there must be a corresponding private key
 somewhere.  With OpenSSL, public keys are easily derived from private
@@ -26,22 +30,25 @@ keys, so before you create a certificate or a certificate request, you
 need to create a private key.
 
 Private keys are generated with 'openssl genrsa' if you want a RSA
-private key, or 'openssl gendsa' if you want a DSA private key.  More
-info on how to handle these commands are found in the manual pages for
-those commands or by running them with the argument '-h'.  For the
-sake of the description in this file, let's assume that the private
-key ended up in the file privkey.pem (which is the default in some
-cases).
-
-
-Let's start with the most normal way of getting a certificate.  Most
-often, you want or need to get a certificate from a certificate
-authority.  To handle that, the certificate authority needs a
-certificate request (or, as some certificate authorities like to put
+private key, or 'openssl gendsa' if you want a DSA private key.
+Further information on how to create private keys can be found in
+another HOWTO <keys.txt?>.  The rest of this text assumes you have
+a private key in the file privkey.pem.
+
+
+3. Creating a certificate request
+
+To create a certificate, you need to start with a certificate
+request (or, as some certificate authorities like to put
 it, "certificate signing request", since that's exactly what they do,
 they sign it and give you the result back, thus making it authentic
-according to their policies) from you.  To generate a request, use the
-command 'openssl req' like this:
+according to their policies).  A certificate request can then be sent
+to a certificate authority to get it signed into a certificate, or if
+you have your own certificate authority, you may sign it yourself, or
+if you need a self-signed certificate (because you just want a test
+certificate or because you are setting up your own CA).
+
+The certificate is created like this:
 
   openssl req -new -key privkey.pem -out cert.csr
 
@@ -55,9 +62,25 @@ When the certificate authority has then done the checks the need to
 do (and probably gotten payment from you), they will hand over your
 new certificate to you.
 
+Section 5 will tell you more on how to handle the certificate you
+received.
+
+
+4. Creating a self-signed certificate
+
+If you don't want to deal with another certificate authority, or just
+want to create a test certificate for yourself, or are setting up a
+certificate authority of your own, you may want to make the requested
+certificate a self-signed one.  If you have created a certificate
+request as shown above, you can sign it using the 'openssl x509'
+command, for example like this (to create a self-signed CA
+certificate):
+
+  openssl x509 -req -in cert.csr -extfile openssl.cnf -extensions v3_ca \
+         -signkey privkey.pem -out cacert.pem -trustout
 
-[fill in on how to create a self-signed certificate]
 
+5. What to do with the certificate
 
 If you created everything yourself, or if the certificate authority
 was kind enough, your certificate is a raw DER thing in PEM format.