Manually Create a CSR in Windows

When using SSL on Windows, you must create a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) to receive an SSL certificate.

• A CSR is a data file that contains the Public Key and your domain details.

• Submit the CSR to your SSL provider.  

• Your provider verifies the CSR and issues an SSL certificate in a .crt file.  

Use the FileCloud control panel to create a CSR. If you encounter issues, you can create the request manually.

 Create a CSR using the FileCloud Control Panel

To manually create an SSL certificate, use the openssl tool included with FileCloud Server.

To manually create a CSR:

1. On the FileCloud server, navigate to the following directory:
   

   c:\xampp\apache\bin
   

2. To open the tool, double-click OpenSSL.
   
   

3. To create a Private Server Key, type the following code: (If your SSL provider does not accept key lengths of 2048, a higher length of 4096 can  be used in the follwing command.)
   

   C:\xampp\apache\bin>openssl genrsa -des3 -out server.key 2048 -config "C:\xampp\apache\conf\openssl.cnf"
   

   
   

   If you encounter any errors related to:

   unable to open configuration file

   Then run the following in the command prompt to set the path.

   set OPENSSL_CONF=c:\xampp\apache\conf\openssl.cnf

4.  To create a Certificate Request (CSR), type the following command:
   

   C:\xampp\apache\bin>openssl req -new -key server.key -out server.csr -config "C:\xampp\apache\conf\openssl.cnf"
   

5. You will be prompted to enter the following information:
   

   Information	Example	Notes
   Country Name	US	2letter code
   State or Province Name	TEXAS	full name - no abbreviations
   Locality Name	Houston	full city name
   Organization Name	Internet Widgits Pty Ltd	company name
   Organizational Unit Name	Accounts Payable	section name
   Common Name	filecloud.IWPL.com	server FQDN or YOUR name Be sure to enter the actual server's fully qualified name filecloud.yourdomain.com If it is a wildcard certificate for all sub domains (for example for using multi tenancy), then be sure to enter *.yourdomain.com *.yourdomain.com
   Email Address	moneyman@iwpl.com
   A challenge password		Use the same passphrase you typed in when opening the tool.

6. Apache won't start up properly if the key is secured with passphrase, so to remove it, type the following command:
   

   copy server.key server.key.secure
   openssl rsa -in server.key.secure -out server.key
   

7. You can now submit the CSR to your SSL provider.
   The provider will sign and give you an SSL certificate usually called as server.crt.