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How to Create Certificates for OpenLDAP

Learn how to generate and configure certificates for use with OpenLDAP, ensuring secure communication within your directory service environment.

Written by Seaghan McNelis

Updated at July 27th, 2024

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Table of Contents

What Is SSL? CA Server For Each Server

In this article, we are assuming you have OpenSSL installed. You will first generate a CA certificate and then server certificates for each OpenLDAP server in your environment.

What Is SSL?

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a communication protocol that encrypts data sent between devices or applications on a network. It's a standard technology that prevents hackers from stealing or seeing data transferred between a website and a browser, or between two servers. SSL provides privacy, authentication, and integrity to internet communications.

CA Server

CA step should only be done one time!

 

1) Generate CA Key: 

openssl genrsa -des3 -out ca.key 4096

2) Generate CA PEM file: 

openssl req -x509 -new -nodes -key ca.key -sha256 -days 3650 -out ca.crt

Note: Subject should be organization name CA, like "Example_Company CA Certificate"

For Each Server

3) Generate server key and signing request. Do not set a password: 

openssl req -new -nodes -out slapd.csr -keyout slapd.key -newkey rsa:4096

Note: subject should be the full hostname (i.e., server.domain.com) 

4) Sign the server certificate request with the server: 

openssl ca -out slapd.crt -notext -days 3650 -in slapd.csr -keyfile ca.key -extensions v3_req -cert ca.crt

Depending on the OpenSSL configuration file, you may need to create an index.txt file in the location it creates an error about, and a serial file. 

The serial file should be initialized with a value of “00.” 

touch /opt/symas/ssl/ca/demoCA/index.txt
echo 00 >/opt/symas/ssl/ca/demoCA/serial

5) On the server, make sure the permissions are set properly. Example: 

chown ldap:ldap slapd.key slapd.crt

 

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