Compiling OpenSSL

# gunzip < openssl*.tar.gz | tar xvf - # cd openssl* # ./config --prefix=/usr/local/ssl -- openssldir=/usr/local/ssl/openssl # make # make install

mod_ssl is the Apache module that implements HTTPS. The OpenSSL project provides the base cryptographic libraries used by mod_ssl, as well as command-line utilities for creating and manipulating server certificates.

You can download a Windows binary build from the binaries section of the OpenSSL website at http://www.openssl.org. Most modern Unix-like systems include OpenSSL by default, or you can install it using the system package management tools. If that is not the case, or you require a newer version than the one available in your system, you can download the OpenSSL source code and install it as shown at the beginning of this section. The rest of this chapter assumes that you installed OpenSSL in /usr/local/ssl.

The openssl command line tool is included as part of the OpenSSL distribution and will be placed in /usr/local/ssl/bin/.