Topics: Red Hat / Linux, Security

Renew self-signed SSL Certificate

Should the root user receive emails from certwatch about expiring self-signed certificates, like these: 

 ################# SSL Certificate Warning ################

  Certificate for hostname 'yourhost', in file (or by nickname):
     /etc/pki/tls/certs/localhost.crt

  The certificate needs to be renewed; this can be done
  using the 'genkey' program.

  Browsers will not be able to correctly connect to this
  web site using SSL until the certificate is renewed.

 ##########################################################
                                  Generated by certwatch(1)

Then, you can run the following command to renew this self-signed certificate for a new year: 
# openssl req -new -days 365 -x509 -nodes -out /etc/pki/tls/certs/localhost.crt \ 
-keyout /etc/pki/tls/private/localhost.key

More complete instructions can be found here: http://stevejenkins.com/blog/2010/08/renewing-a-self-signed-ssl-certificate-on-fedoracentos



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