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How do I create a CSR to activate an SSL certificate?

All modern control panels (for example, FASTPANEL or Ispmanager) allow users to create a CSR request.

FASTPANEL -> SSL certificates -> New certificate -> Certificate signing request

You can also create a CSR request through SSH. To get a SSL certificate issued, you need to make a correct certificate signing request (CSR.) You can generate such a request by connecting to your server via SSH and executing the following command:

openssl req -out fastssl.csr -new -newkey rsa:2048 -sha256 -nodes -keyout fastssl.key ; cat fastssl.csr

After the command execution, the system will ask you provide a few pieces of information in Latin letters one by one:

  • Country Name — a two-letter country code (for example, US is an abbreviation for the United States of America.)

  • State or Province Name — the state or province where your company is legally located.

  • Locality Name - the city where your company is legally located.

  • Organization Name — your company’s legally registered name.

  • Organizational Unit Name — the name of your department within the organization.

  • Common Name — the fully-qualified domain name the certificate will be issued for. You need to enter the exact name of the main domain. If its address starts with www, you should enter it before the domain name. If the domain name doesn't contain a www part, don't enter it.

  • Email Address — the email address used to contact your organization.

  • A challenge password — when you see this field, just press the Enter key.

  • An optional company name — another name of your organization. This field is optional, you can press Enter to skip it.

Of all the fields mentioned above, only Common Name is a required field. You can enter the other information or skip these steps. You can press Enter to skip optional fields.

After you enter the data, the screen will display some lines starting with -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- and ending with -----END CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- — this will be the CSR you need. Please copy these lines and paste them into the CSR field.

If you have any questions or problems at any of the stages, please create a support ticket. Our specialists will be happy to help you! We can also generate a CSR for you. To do it, we will need all the information above. Please, give us this information in your ticket.