This is a text-only version of the following page on https://raymii.org: --- Title : OpenSSL Generate CSR non-interactive Author : Remy van Elst Date : 09-02-2013 URL : https://raymii.org/s/snippets/OpenSSL_generate_CSR_non-interactive.html Format : Markdown/HTML --- This is a short command to generate a CSR (certificate signing request) with openssl without being prompted for the values which go in the certificate's Subject field.

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When you use OpenSSL to generate a CSR and a private key you use the following command: openssl req -nodes -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout private.key -out CSR.csr This is the output: Generating a 2048 bit RSA private key .................................................................+++ .......................................................................+++ writing new private key to 'private.key' ----- You are about to be asked to enter information that will be incorporated into your certificate request. What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a DN. There are quite a few fields but you can leave some blank For some fields there will be a default value, If you enter '.', the field will be left blank. ----- Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]:NL State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]:Zuid Holland Locality Name (eg, city) []:Rotterdam Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]:Sparkling Network Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:IT Department Common Name (e.g. server FQDN or YOUR name) []:ssl.raymii.org Email Address []: Please enter the following 'extra' attributes to be sent with your certificate request A challenge password []: An optional company name []: You can see that you have to fill in a lot of data during the generation. If you do not want that, maybe because you are using a script to generate a lot of CSR's and private keys, you use the following command. It does the same as the above command, but it has all the data in it: openssl req -nodes -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout private.key -out CSR.csr -subj "/C=NL/ST=Zuid Holland/L=Rotterdam/O=Sparkling Network/OU=IT Department/CN=ssl.raymii.org" This is the output: Generating a 2048 bit RSA private key .......+++ ..............................................................................................................................................+++ writing new private key to 'private.key' ----- This is what the `-subj` option does: * /C=NL: 2 letter ISO country code (Netherlands) * /ST=: State, Zuid Holland (South holland) * /L=: Location, city (Rotterdam) * /O=: Organization (Sparkling Network) * /OU=: Organizational Unit, Department (IT Department, Sales) * /CN=: Common Name, for a website certificate this is the FQDN. (ssl.raymii.org) You can also give a `/serialNumber=0123456` with the above option. [This is NOT the serial number the issuing Certificate Authority (CA) will use, but a way to give extra information to a certificate. If you have a CN for John Doe, and another one, the serialNumber field can be used to distinguish John Doe 1 from John Doe 2's certificate. Click here for more info.][2] [1]: https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=7435ae6b8212 [2]: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.encryption.openssl.user/9091 --- License: All the text on this website is free as in freedom unless stated otherwise. This means you can use it in any way you want, you can copy it, change it the way you like and republish it, as long as you release the (modified) content under the same license to give others the same freedoms you've got and place my name and a link to this site with the article as source. This site uses Google Analytics for statistics and Google Adwords for advertisements. You are tracked and Google knows everything about you. Use an adblocker like ublock-origin if you don't want it. All the code on this website is licensed under the GNU GPL v3 license unless already licensed under a license which does not allows this form of licensing or if another license is stated on that page / in that software: This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see . Just to be clear, the information on this website is for meant for educational purposes and you use it at your own risk. I do not take responsibility if you screw something up. Use common sense, do not 'rm -rf /' as root for example. If you have any questions then do not hesitate to contact me. See https://raymii.org/s/static/About.html for details.