I have my server installed with a self-signed ssl certificate. But this throws up a warning message on my browser when I try to access https. How do I generate a trusted cert?

You need to buy one from a certificate authority.

(Disclaimer: I'm all Windows and IE. Your mileage may vary.)

 

You can install your own certificate as trusted (via IE or the cert snap-in for MMC), or build your own root cert, trust that, and build certs off it.

 

I've done this using the makecert tool for my own test servers.

 

This shouldn't be done for anything exposed to the World, as the keys generated by makecert are not strong. And in any case, if you want other people to access your servers you'd have to get them to trust your certs to avoid the warnings too).

 

(Also, on my DEV PC at work, as a quick-and-simple I've installed the "localhost" cert built by IIS Express into (Real) IIS, and use that to access test sites with SSL and no whining from the browser - but that's of course only useful for local development use.)

 

 

If this is for real world use, just get a cert from someone like godaddy. Prices vary a lot.

Edited July 11, 201510 yr by pzkpfw

As far as I can tell the browsers have set different root certificate authorities depending on what suits them. I can write a root CA file but it won't be a trusted CA file unless it is installed on my browser. I can config httpd.txt to give the install certificate option when clicking on a hyperlink to the file. Which would install the cert as a root CA.

 

 

I've installed the "localhost" cert built by IIS Express into (Real) IIS, and use that to access test sites with SSL and no whining from the browser - but that's of course only useful for local development use.

 

 

As far as I can tell IIS can install the cert on your machine so there is no way of telling whether it works on the internet without accessing the site from another server. Though I am not using IIS at the moment. I am using apache(cern) httpd

Edited July 11, 201510 yr by fiveworlds