[header] How to install an ssl certificate [title] Generate a certificate signing request (csr). [step] Before you can purchase and install an ssl certificate, you will need to generate a csr on your server. This file contains your server and public key information, and is required to generate the private key. 
You can generate a csr directly from the apache command line : [substeps] Start the openssl utility. This can usually be found at/usr/local/ssl/bin/create a key pair by entering the following command: openssl genrsa-des3-out www.mydomain.