Now we're going to build and install the libraries for our secure Web server. These libraries provide the functions needed for SSL, or secure socket layers . We want a secure Web server to protect your password and all of your traffic to your Web server while you check your e-mail. This will prevent someone from listening to your conversation and gathering your password.
Building the libraries and installing them is really quite simple. Starting from the directory that contains all of our archives, webmail/, the steps are very easy. First, we unpack the archive:
$ tar -zxvf openssl-0.9.6.tar.gz
Now we're going to configure and build the libraries. The configuration management is pretty smart, and it can figure out a lot about our system without asking us any questions. The build process is also automated.
$ cd openssl-0.9.6
$ ./config
(output omitted)
$ make
(output omitted)
Now all we have to do is become root and install the software in the default directories. Programs that use OpenSSL usually expect it in this default location ( /usr/local/ssl ), so we won't change it:
# make install
And that's all there is to that. We now have the needed libraries for our secure server to be built. Other programs can also use these libraries, as can some applications in the OpenSSL installation. See the Resources section at the end of this chapter for where to find more information about OpenSSL and the applications that use it.