SSL Certificate for Use With Nginx on Localhost  ^[draft]

Here are the general steps you can follow:

1. Install OpenSSL on your local machine, if it is not already installed. OpenSSL is a command-line tool used to generate the certificate.
2. Generate a self-signed certificate using the following command:

openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout localhost.key -out localhost.crt

This command will generate a private key (localhost.key) and a self-signed certificate (localhost.crt) that is valid for 365 days. During the process, you’ll be prompted to enter some information about the certificate, such as the Common Name (CN), which should be set to localhost in this case.

3. Move the localhost.key and localhost.crt files to a directory that Nginx can access. For example, you can create a new directory called ssl in your Nginx configuration directory and move the files there:

sudo mkdir /etc/nginx/ssl
sudo mv localhost.key localhost.crt /etc/nginx/ssl/

4. Update your Nginx configuration to use the SSL certificate. Here’s an example server block:

server {
    listen 443 ssl;
    server_name localhost;

    ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/localhost.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/localhost.key;

    location / {
        root /var/www/html;
        index index.html;
    }
}

This server block configures Nginx to listen on port 443 (HTTPS), use the SSL certificate, and serve files from the /var/www/html directory. Replace this with your own configuration as needed.

5. Restart Nginx to apply the changes:

sudo systemctl restart nginx

You should now be able to access your local Nginx server over HTTPS by visiting https://localhost in your web browser. Note that since this is a self-signed certificate, your browser will likely show a warning about the site’s security. You can safely ignore this warning since you generated the certificate yourself.

Useful links: