Lab
A Cloud Guru

NGINX - Managing SSL Certificates Using OpenSSL

Before we can start building our world-changing website or application on LEMP, we have to lay the foundation - the stack. In this hands-on lab, we will walk through the creation of self-signed SSL certificates. Completing this lab will provide have a good understanding of how to create SSL certificates using OpenSSL on Ubuntu Linux.

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Path Info

Level

Intermediate

Duration

45m

Published

Jan 10, 2020

Challenge

Create a Certificate Authority Private Key and Certificate
Become root:
```
sudo su -
```
Create a directory to store our certificates:
```
mkdir -p /etc/nginx/certificates
```
```
cd /etc/nginx/certificates
```
Generate a private key for the CA:
```
openssl genrsa 2048 > ca-key.pem
```
Generate the X509 certificate for the CA. For this step, just hit Enter for all the questions and use the default answers:
```
openssl req -new -x509 -nodes -days 365000 
      -key ca-key.pem -out ca-cert.pem
```
Challenge

Create a Private Key for the NGINX Server
Generate a private key and create a certificate request for the NGINX server:
```
openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -days 365000 
      -nodes -keyout server-key.pem -out server-req.pem
```
We will have to answer some questions.

Process the key to remove the passphrase:
```
openssl rsa -in server-key.pem -out server-key.pem
```
We should see the following: writing RSA key
Challenge

Create a Self-Signed Certificate for the NGINX Server
Generate a self-signed X509 certificate for the NGINX server:
```
openssl x509 -req -in server-req.pem -days 365000 
      -CA ca-cert.pem -CAkey ca-key.pem -set_serial 01 
      -out server-cert.pem
```
We now have self-signed X509 certificates for the NGINX server in the /etc/nginx/certificates directory.

We need to allow the nginx user access to the certificates. Add read permission for group and other:
```
chmod 644 *
```
Challenge

Verify the Self-Signed Certificate for the NGINX Server
Let's use the openssl verify command to verify that the X509 certificate was correctly generated:
```
openssl verify -CAfile ca-cert.pem server-cert.pem
```
We should see the following: server-cert.pem: OK

Author

A Cloud Guru

The Cloud Content team comprises subject matter experts hyper focused on services offered by the leading cloud vendors (AWS, GCP, and Azure), as well as cloud-related technologies such as Linux and DevOps. The team is thrilled to share their knowledge to help you build modern tech solutions from the ground up, secure and optimize your environments, and so much more!

What's a lab?

Hands-on Labs are real environments created by industry experts to help you learn. These environments help you gain knowledge and experience, practice without compromising your system, test without risk, destroy without fear, and let you learn from your mistakes. Hands-on Labs: practice your skills before delivering in the real world.