Generating a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) - Mac OS X Server 10.5

Follow the instructions below to generate a CSR for your website. When you have completed generating your CSR, cut/copy and paste the certificate content into the CSR field on the SSL certificate-request page.

To Generate your Certificate Signing Request (CSR)

1. Launch the Server Admin tool and connect to the server where you want to install the certificate.
2. Highlight the server node in the SERVERS list.
3. Select the Certificates button from the toolbar at the top of the right pane.
4. Click the + button.
5. Fill in the fields as appropriate. A brief description of each field follows:
   • Common Name - The fully-qualified domain name for which you plan to use your certificate (e.g., - "www.example.com").
   • Organization - The full legal name of your organization. The listed organization must be the legal registrant of the domain name in the certificate request. If you are enrolling as an individual, please enter the certificate requestor's name in the Organization field, and the DBA (doing business as) name in the Organizational Unit field.
   • Organizational Unit - Optional. Enter the name of a business unit or group. If applicable, you may enter the DBA (doing business as) name in this field.
   • City (Locality) - Name of the city in which your organization is registered/located. Please spell out the name of the city. Do not abbreviate.
   • State/Province - Name of state or province where your organization is located. Please enter the full name. Do not abbreviate.
   • Country Code - The two-letter International Organization for Standardization- (ISO-) format country code for the country in which your organization is legally registered.
   • Valid From/Expires On - Not used. Leave at default values.
   • Private Key Size - Must be at least 2048.
   • Private Key Passphrase - Optional. If you wish to use a private key passphrase, enter and confirm it here. Note that this passphrase will need to be made available to the system whenever starting any applications that make use of this certificate. If you want your services to be able to start automatically upon server startup, leave the passphrase field blank.
6. Click the Done button, then click the Save button.
7. Click the Gear button and then select Generate Certificate Signing Request (CSR).
8. Drag the icon on the sheet to the directory where you wish to save the certificate request. The rest of this document assumes that the file was saved to the Desktop.
9. Click Done.
10. Rename the file that was created from "-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUE" to "certreq". This file contains the Certificate Signing Request (CSR) that you will need to provide when submitting your certificate request to us.