gistfile1.txt

Create a Private Key

Keep the private key file in a safe place as it will be required again when configuring SSL for your application.
A private key is required to generate the CSR. You will be asked to enter a passphrase for your private key during this process. Enter any value as we will strip it out in the next step.

$ openssl genrsa -des3 -out site.key 2048
...
Enter pass phrase for site.key:
Verifying - Enter pass phrase for site.key:
You will now have a site.keyprivate key file in your current working directory.

For the certificate to be automatically loaded into a web server the site.key private key file will need to have its password stripped.

Making a copy of the unstripped file, site.orig.key, ensures we can easily rollback should we encounter errors.
$ mv site.key site.orig.key
$ openssl rsa -in site.orig.key -out site.key