How to generate a CSR using command line

Introduction

In some cases, a user may wish to generate certificate signing requests without a SANs domain. To accomplish this the request and key pair will need to be generated using OpenSSL.

The cPanel software does not provide this functionality and we recommend against it. For more information, I advise reviewing the following article before proceeding. 

Why does my CSR generated via cPanel or WHM contain a SAN?

If you are looking to generate a CSR through the cPanel software please see the following article instead.

How to generate a CSR for your domain

Procedure

To manually create a CSR for this domain, you will need to access your server through SSH or use the Terminal feature in WHM to run the following commands on the server.  

Please be aware that the following command will generate these files in the cwd for your session. By default this is the secure home directory for the active user, but be sure not to run these in a publicly accessible location(like a domains public_html).

Run the following command to create the private key for the SSL, and the accompanying CSR:

 openssl req -new -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout private.key -out csr.csr

You will be given a series of prompts to fill in, these will apply to the domain. 

Once completed, you will now have 2 files: "private.key", which is your SSL's private key and "csr.csr" which is the CSR file needed to get your SSL.  You can import these through the accounts cPanel interface using the SSL/TLS feature. For additional details regarding this feature, see the following documentation.

SSL/TLS for cPanel