We can create a self-signed key and certificate pair with OpenSSL in a single command :

sudo openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout  /etc/ssl/private/apache-selfsigned.key -out /etc/ssl/certs/apache-selfsigned.crt

You will be asked a series of questions. Before we go over that, let’s take a look at what is happening in the command we are issuing:

Output
Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]:US
State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]:New York
Locality Name (eg, city) []:New York City
Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]:Bouncy Castles, Inc.
Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:Ministry of Water Slides
Common Name (e.g. server FQDN or YOUR name) []:server_IP_address
Email Address []:admin@your_domain.com

Both of the files you created will be placed in the appropriate subdirectories under /etc/ssl.

We have created our key and certificate files under the /etc/ssl directory. Now we just need to modify our Apache configuration to take advantage of these.

We will make a few adjustments to our configuration :