CSR Generation Instructions

The following instructions will guide you through the CSR generation process on F5 BIG-IP Loadbalancer (version 8 and under). To learn more about CSRs and the importance of your private key, reference our Overview of Certificate Signing Request article.If you already generated the CSR and received your trusted SSL certificate, reference our SSL Installation Instructions and disregard the steps below.

  1. Login to the BIG-IP device as the root user and run the following command:

    # /usr/local/bin/genconf

  2. Enter your company details including the full legal entity name and physical address of operation. Do not abbreviate.
  3. Create the CSR by entering the following command:

  4. # /usr/local/bin/genkey www.yoursite.com
    Note: You will replace www.yoursite.com with the FQDN (fully-qualified domain name) you want to secure with the certificate such as www.google.com, secure.website.org, *.domain.net, etc.

  5. Enter your company details such as the full legal entity name, organization unit, physical address, etc.
  6. Under /config/bigconfig/ssl.csr/ locate and open the newly created CSR file named after the FQDN you specified (i.e. www.yoursite.com.csr) in a text editor such as Notepad and copy all of the text including:

  7. -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUEST-----
    And
    -----END CERTIFICATE REQUEST-----
    Note: You may have to transfer the CSR to the workstation you will use to order the certificate.

  8. Return to the Generation Form on our website and paste the entire CSR into the blank text box and continue with completing the generation process.

Upon generating your CSR, your order will enter the validation process with the issuing Certificate Authority (CA) and require the certificate requester to complete some form of validation depending on the certificate purchased. For information regarding the different levels of the validation process and how to satisfy the industry requirements, reference our validation articles.

After you complete the validation process and receive the trusted SSL Certificate from the issuing Certificate Authority (CA), proceed with the next step using our SSL Installation Instructions for F5 BIG IP Loadbalancer (version 8 and under).