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Release: Australia · Updated: 2026-03-12 · Official documentation · View source

Generating an LDAP client certificate

Generate an LDAP client certificate for mutual authentication using OpenSSL. The final output is a PKCS#12 certificate stored within a Java keystore.

Before you begin

Role required: admin

About this task

See the OpenSSL documentation for more information about generating certificates. These steps assume you have access to OpenSSL.

Enter these commands in a command line interface.

Procedure

  1. Generate a self-signed client certificate.

    For example, this command creates a client certificate test1-cert.crt based on the test1-key.key private key.

    openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout test1-key.key -out test1-cert.crt
    
  2. Convert both the certificate file and private key to PKCS#12 (a file with a .pfx or .p12 extension).

    For example, this command converts the client certificate and private key to a PKCS#12 certificate called test1-certificate.pfx.

    openssl pkcs12 -export -out test1-certificate.pfx -inkey test1-key.key -in test1-cert.crt
    
  3. Generate the Java Key Store and import the pkcs12 file into it.

    For example, this command imports the certificate to the test1.jks Java keystore.

    keytool -importkeystore -srckeystore test1-certificate.pfx -srcstoretype PKCS12 -destkeystore test1.jks
    
  4. Upload the certificate in the keystore file (test1.jks) to the instance.

    Note:

    If you are uploading to an on-premise instance using a certificate with the .jks extension and you receive an error saying "No valid certificate found to process the application upload", use a certificate with the .pfx extension instead.

What to do next

Uploading a certificate to an instance

  • Generating a server certificate
    You can use keytool to generate a new Java keystore file, create a certificate signing request (CSR), and import the private key, public certificate pair, and signed certificates into the keystore.

Parent Topic:Certificates

Related topics

Exploring Certificates

Uploading a certificate to an instance