6.5.1

Table Of Contents
Specify --Name to replace the CN field of the Subject name of the certificate.
n
For solution user certificates, the name is <sol_user name>@<domain> by convention, but you can
change the name if a different convention is used in your environment.
n
For machine SSL certificates, the FQDN of the machine is used.
VMCA allows only one DNSName (in the Hostname field) and no other Alias options. If the IP address
is specified by the user, it is stored in SubAltName as well.
Use the --Hostname parameter to specify the DNSName of a certificate's SubAltName.
certool Initialization Commands Reference
The certool initialization commands allow you to generate certificate signing requests, view and
generate certificates and keys that are signed by VMCA, import root certificates, and perform other
certificate management operations.
In many cases, you pass a configuration file in to a certool command. See Changing the certool
Configuration Options. See Replace Existing VMCA-Signed Certificates With New VMCA-Signed
Certificates for some usage examples. The command-line help provides details about the options.
certool --initcsr
Generates a Certificate Signing Request (CSR). The command generates a PKCS10 file and a private
key.
Option Description
--initcsr
Required for generating CSRs.
--privkey <key_file>
Name of the private key file.
--pubkey <key_file>
Name of the public key file.
--csrfile <csr_file>
File name for the CSR file to be sent to the CA provider.
--config <config_file>
Optional name of the configuration file. Defaults to
certool.cfg.
Example:
certool --initcsr --privkey=<filename> --pubkey=<filename> --csrfile=<filename>
certool --selfca
Creates a self-signed certificate and provisions the VMCA server with a self-signed root CA. Using this
option is one of the simplest ways to provision the VMCA server. You can instead provision the VMCA
server with a third-party root certificate so that VMCA is an intermediate CA. See Use VMCA as an
Intermediate Certificate Authority.
This command generates a certificate that is predated by three days to avoid time zone conflicts.
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