[ILUG] OpenSSL & VSFTP

[david]

Hi all, 

I am trying to help secure an FTP installation by forcing connections over 
SSL, but at the moment it looks like I am missing a basic step and would 
appreciate some info - even if it is to tell me that what I want to do can't 
be done so I can stop trying. 

The situation is as follows - RH server, running among other things VSFTPD 
and OpenSSL.  I don't have the versions to hand, but will post them later. 

In the man page for vsftpd.conf there are a number of options which control 
the configuration for SSL, but having configured most of them I note that 
the one I can't do is the location of the certificate file. 

Further investigation shows that there are a number of .pem files for 
applications such as ipop3d, but no mention of vsftpd.  I tried generating a 
new certificate file using the installed OpenSSL, but there seems to be 
something missing because the CA.pl file (used as a front end to the OpenSSL 
engine) which the documentation references is nowhere to be found. 

Questions -
1) is there some default/generic certificate file I can use ?
2) if I need to issue a new cert and I can't find CA.pl, is there is set of 
instructions somewhere indicating how to generate a cert which can be used 
by VSFTPD ? 

If anyone has any ideas it would be great. 

Regards, 

David Ryan (used to be david at linux.ie long, long ago)