[edit] What It Is

A certificate signing request (CSR) is a request to sign a digital certificate. When you generate a certificate, the certificate signing request is usually given to a trusted certificate authority. The CSR is read and a signed certificate is returned to you.

[edit] Generating a Certificate Signing Request

Certificate Signing Requests can be generated using OpenSSL.

openssl req -newkey rsa:1024 -nodes -keyout certificate_key.key -keyform PEM \
 -out certificate_signing_request.csr -outform PEM

One might want to change certificate_key.key and certificate_signing_request.csr to files more representative of the certificate you are creating.

For example, if you were creating the digital certificate for the wiki.case.edu web server, you would run:

openssl req -newkey rsa:1024 -nodes -keyout wiki.case.edu.key -keyform PEM \
-out wiki.case.edu.csr -outform PEM

[edit] What To Do With the CSR

Once you have your certificate signing request, you need to pass it along to a certificate authority for signing.