OpenSSL for Linux web servers

The information provided in this chapter should give you everything needed to protect websites with SSL certificates issued from a public CA….on a Windows webserver. While this is obviously a Microsoft-centric book, the majority of webservers out there are not running on Microsoft webserver platforms. Alas, you will likely run into just as many Linux-based webservers as you do instances of IIS, and it will be very helpful to your role as server administrator to be able to install certificates onto these webservers as well.

One significant difference between Windows and Linux webservers are the types of files used for certificates. IIS hides away the private key, you don’t really deal with it at all. When downloading certificate files for IIS, those are usually CER or CRT files. A Linux webserver, however, is expecting something else. On most Linux webservers, the certificate file and the private key are each an individual file which are quite...