Your Geotrust certificate will be sent via email. If the certificate is included as an attachment (Cert.cer), you may use the file. If the certificate is imbedded in the body of the email, copy and paste it into a text file (such as OriginalCert.txt) using Vi or Notepad. Do not use Microsoft Word or other word processing programs that may add characters. Confirm that there are no extra lines or spaces in the file.
1. To follow the naming convention for Apache, rename the certificate filename with the .crt extension. For example: cert.crt
2. Copy your Certificate into the directory that you will be using to hold your certificates. In For example: /usr/local/ssl/crt/.
Configure the Server
In order to use the key pair, the httpd.conf file will need to be updated. Open the httpd.conf configuration file and find the Virtual Host settings.
Verify that you have the following 2 directives within this Virtual Host and add them if they are not present:
SSLCertificateFile /usr/local/ssl/crt/public.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile /usr/local/ssl/private/private.key
The first directive tells Apache how to find the Certificate File and the second one where the private key is located.
If you are using a different location and certificate file names than the example above (which most likely you are) you will need to change the path and filename to reflect your server.
Note: Some instances of Apache contain both a httpd.conf and ssl.conf file. Please enter or amend the httpd.conf or the ssl.conf with the above directives. Do not enter both as there will be a conflict and Apache may not start.
3. Save your httpd.conf file and restart Apache. You can most likely do so by using the apachectl script:
apachectl stop
apachectl startssl
You should now be set to start using your Geotrust certificate with your Apache-SSL Server.