CSR Generation Instructions

The following instructions will guide you through the CSR generation process on LiteSpeed. 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.

Note: The following guide assumes that you have OpenSSL installed and feel comfortable entering command prompts.

1. Generate an RSA private key by running the following command:

   Openssl genrsa –out server.key 2048
   Note: The text "server.key" will set the file name of your private key. You can rename this at your discretion, but make sure you leave the extension as ".key".

2. Generate the CSR by running the following command:

3. Openssl req –new –key server.key –out server.csr

   Note: The text "server.key" should be changed to match whatever file name you specified when creating the private key in Step 1. You can rename this at your discretion, but make sure you leave the extension as ".csr".

4. The command will prompt you to enter in the following CSR details:
   • Common Name (CN): The FQDN (fully-qualified domain name) you want to secure with the certificate such as www.google.com, secure.website.org, *.domain.net, etc.
   • Organization Name (ON): The full legal name of your organization including the corporate identifier.
   • Organizational Unit (OU): Your department such as 'Information Technology' or 'Website Security.'
   • Locality or City (L): The locality or city where your organization is legally incorporated. Do not abbreviate.
   • State or Province (S): The state or province where your organization is legally incorporated. Do not abbreviate.
   • Country Name (C): The official two-letter country code (i.e. US, CH) where your organization is legally incorporated.
5. Congratulations, you created a CSR and it was automatically saved under the file name you specified and in the directory where you ran the command.
6. Locate and open the newly created CSR in a text editor such as Notepad and copy all the text including:

7. -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUEST-----
   And
   -----END CERTIFICATE REQUEST-----

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 LiteSpeed.