Generate CSR for an SSL certificate in NGINX

Steps to generate a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) for an SSL certificate in NGINX

Create an OpenSSL configuration file:

openssl genrsa -out server.key 2048

This will generate a 2048 bit RSA private key called server.key.

Now create the CSR:

openssl req -new -key server.key -out server.csr

You'll be prompted for information like:

• Common Name (domain name)
• Organization Name
• Locality/City
• State/Province
• Country code

This creates the CSR file server.csr.

You can now submit this server.csr file to a CA like DigiCert, LetsEncrypt, etc. to obtain an SSL certificate.

Once you receive the certificate file (typically named server.crt) and any intermediate CA certificates, you can configure NGINX to use them:

server {
listen 443 ssl;
server_name example.com;
ssl_certificate /path/to/server.crt;
ssl_certificate_key /path/to/server.key;
ssl_trusted_certificate /path/to/intermediate.crt;
}

Restart NGINX to apply the changes:

systemctl restart nginx

This configures NGINX to use your SSL certificate (server.crt), private key (server.key), and any intermediate CA certificate files.