Gentoo Blog

This howto shows you howto create a self signed SSL certificate without a passphrase. Using openssl with one single command:

openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:1024 -keyout mykey.key -out mycert.crt

After you have answered all the questions you should have two files one key file and one crt file. Please make sure to enter your domain name when asked for your common name. This can also be an ip address if you don’t have a domain name to use. You can change how long the cert is valid for by changing the value days. If you prefer to have your cert and key in one file normally called a pem file please use the following command:

openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 1095 -newkey rsa:1024 -keyout mycert.pem -out mycert.pem

As you can see the only thing i changed is instead of using two file names one for the key and one for the cert. You just repeat the first name which will create the cert and the key in one file called mycert.pem in our example.

In Gentoo Linux from PHP 5.2 and onwards quite a few things have changed. It is now possible to have a slotted installation of PHP to help people to upgrade to PHP 5.3 and larger. I won’t take the time to explain everything because the Gentoo Dev’s have made a great attempt in creating the PHP Admin Guide. Please read this guide before you attempt the upgrade. Unless you server is a non production system and you don’t care about downtime:

Gentoo Upgrading PHP