Going SSL? Start with sslshopper.com!

Norman — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 03:43:31 +0000

Things that you do infrequently often wind up taking much more time to do than they should. I’ve learned that in these cases, Google can be your friend. This was true when I was trying to install an SSL certificate that I purchased at godaddy.com on my server using DirectAdmin. It started out OK, but godaddy kept refusing my CSR, saying that it was not 2048 or 4096 bits long… their only two options. DirectAdmin had two options, 1024 or 2048 and of course I chose 2048. I tried and tried but no luck… just wasn’t working. I opened up a support ticked at my host and called godaddy.com on the phone. Godaddy was able to tell me right away that my CSR was indeed 1024 bits, not the requesite 2048. I was thinking,” how did they know that so fast?” The support person took pity on me and suggested that I go to SSLshopper.com and check out their “tools”. Sure enough, they have an assortment of tools to check CSR, Certificate, etc… all free.

Anyway, I was able to figure out the problem myself with Google who helped me find someone who revealed that there is a bug in DirectAdmin… the 2048 selection doesn’t work. However, if you first create a self-signed certificate using 2048, then–suddenly–the 2048 selection works when you request your CSR for the certificate that your purchased. In other words… your CSR will then be 2048 and will be accepted by godaddy. From there, download the certificate and follow the instructions provided by DirectAdmin to complete the install. When finished, you can use sslshopper tools to check your work. If you have done everything right, you should see results like the picture above.

2kno» SSL Certificate

Going SSL? Start with sslshopper.com!