Generating a root CA certificate

We will create some needed directories and files and then proceed with generating the root CA certificate:

1. First, we will make the mini-ca directory where we will put all our CA-related files:

   $ mkdir mini-ca
   $ cd mini-ca

2. Inside the mini-ca directory, we will create the root directory for the files related to the root CA:

   $ mkdir root
   $ cd root

3. Inside the root directory, we will create a directory for issued certificates, a certificate index file, and a CRL number file:

   $ mkdir issued
   $ echo -n >index.txt
   $ echo 01 >crlnumber.txt

4. Now, we have to make a config file for our root CA; we will name this file root.cnf. We will start the config file with some mandatory parameters:

   [ca]
   default_ca = CA_default
   [CA_default]
   database                = index.txt
   new_certs_dir           = issued
   certificate...