Certificate generation

This recipe will demonstrate how to create and sign a certificate request using plain openssl commands. This is slightly different from using the easy-rsa scripts, but very instructive.

Getting ready

Set up the easy-rsa certificate environment using the first recipe from Chapter 2, Client-server IP-only Networks, by sourcing the vars file. This recipe was performed on a computer running Fedora 22 Linux but it can easily be run on Windows or MacOS. Note that the easy-rsa package can be downloaded independently of OpenVPN itself.

How to do it...

Before we can use plain openssl commands to generate and sign a request, there are a few environment variables that need to be set. These variables are not set in the vars file by default.

1. Add the missing environment variables:

          $ cd /etc/openvpn/cookbook
          $ . ./vars
          $ export KEY_CN=
          $ export KEY_OU=
          $ export KEY_NAME=
          $ export OPENSSL_CONF=/etc/openvpn/cookbook/openssl-
              1.0.0.cnf...