Create self-signed SSL certificate for Nginx

gistfile1.sh

#!/bin/bash
echo "Generating an SSL private key to sign your certificate..."
openssl genrsa -des3 -out myssl.key 1024

echo "Generating a Certificate Signing Request..."
openssl req -new -key myssl.key -out myssl.csr

echo "Removing passphrase from key (for nginx)..."
cp myssl.key myssl.key.org
openssl rsa -in myssl.key.org -out myssl.key
rm myssl.key.org

echo "Generating certificate..."
openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in myssl.csr -signkey myssl.key -out myssl.crt

echo "Copying certificate (myssl.crt) to /etc/ssl/certs/"
mkdir -p  /etc/ssl/certs
cp myssl.crt /etc/ssl/certs/

echo "Copying key (myssl.key) to /etc/ssl/private/"
mkdir -p  /etc/ssl/private
cp myssl.key /etc/ssl/private/

hi.. It is a very good gist... I am using nginx on AWS and followed these instructions. But unable to access https://<>. Any suggestions pls.

Note: i have enabled my AWS security group to listen to 443 as well.

I love this article. The self-signing process worked perfectly immediately.

@slava-vishnyakov provided a wonderfully useful snippet for the nginx configuration file. BUT...

I don't know if things have changed in the years since he or she wrote it but, it has one tiny imperfection that resulted in an error (ssl_error_rx_record_too_long) in the browser.

Use this instead..

server {
listen 443 ssl;
ssl on;
ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/certs/myssl.crt;
ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/private/myssl.key;
server_name SERVER_NAME.com;
location / {
}
}

Just add the "ssl" to the listen parameters.

With that, this article becomes one of the most instantly useful I've ever seen.

Thanks to all of you.

As to the Nginx configuration, I got a warning
nginx: [warn] the "ssl" directive is deprecated, use the "listen ... ssl" directive instead in /usr/local/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/local.mysite.com:8

I just removed the ssl on; part and the warning is gone.

In other words, it should be something like this:

server {
    listen               443 ssl;
    ssl_certificate      /etc/ssl/certs/myssl.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key  /etc/ssl/private/myssl.key;
    server_name SERVER_NAME.com;
    location / {
    }
}

Good morning, is it necessary to have a domain to apply this method of generating ssl self-signed certificate?

Because in my company it is handled is url type https://10.164.7.203:37006/PruebaHTTPS

If someone got the next error:

# nginx -t

nginx: [emerg] SSL_CTX_use_certificate("/etc/ssl/certs/myssl.crt") failed (SSL: error:140AB18F:SSL routines:SSL_CTX_use_certificate:ee key too small)
nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test failed

You have to change the length of your certificate from rsa:1024 to rsa:2048