# How to create self-signed certificates

The community.crypto collection offers multiple modules that create private keys, certificate signing requests, and certificates. This guide shows how to create self-signed certificates.

For creating any kind of certificate, you always have to start with a private key. You can use the community.crypto.openssl_privatekey module to create a private key. If you only specify `path`, the default parameters will be used. This will result in a 4096 bit RSA private key:

    - name: Create private key (RSA, 4096 bits)
      community.crypto.openssl_privatekey:
        path: /path/to/certificate.key

You can specify `type` to select another key type, `size` to select a different key size (only available for RSA and DSA keys), or `passphrase` if you want to store the key password-protected:

    - name: Create private key (X25519) with password protection
      community.crypto.openssl_privatekey:
        path: /path/to/certificate.key
        type: X25519
        passphrase: changeme

To create a very simple self-signed certificate with no specific information, you can proceed directly with the community.crypto.x509_certificate module:

    - name: Create simple self-signed certificate
      community.crypto.x509_certificate:
        path: /path/to/certificate.pem
        privatekey_path: /path/to/certificate.key
        provider: selfsigned

(If you used `passphrase` for the private key, you have to provide `privatekey_passphrase`.)

You can use `selfsigned_not_after` to define when the certificate expires (default: in roughly 10 years), and `selfsigned_not_before` to define from when the certificate is valid (default: now).

To define further properties of the certificate, like the subject, Subject Alternative Names (SANs), key usages, name constraints, etc., you need to first create a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) and provide it to the community.crypto.x509_certificate module. If you do not need the CSR file, you can use the community.crypto.openssl_csr_pipe module as in the example below. (To store it to disk, use the community.crypto.openssl_csr module instead.)

    - name: Create certificate signing request (CSR) for self-signed certificate
      community.crypto.openssl_csr_pipe:
        privatekey_path: /path/to/certificate.key
        common_name: ansible.com
        organization_name: Ansible, Inc.
        subject_alt_name:
          - "DNS:ansible.com"
          - "DNS:www.ansible.com"
          - "DNS:docs.ansible.com"
      register: csr

    - name: Create self-signed certificate from CSR
      community.crypto.x509_certificate:
        path: /path/to/certificate.pem
        csr_content: "{{ csr.csr }}"
        privatekey_path: /path/to/certificate.key
        provider: selfsigned