Easy-RSA is a command-line tool that allows you to easily set up a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) system for use with OpenVPN. In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Easy-RSA on Arch Linux using the command line.
Before we begin, make sure that you have the following:
The first step is to update your system to make sure that all packages are up to date. Open a terminal and run the following command:
sudo pacman -Syu
Enter your password when prompted and wait for the updates to complete.
Easy-RSA is available in the official Arch Linux repositories, so you can install it using the following command:
sudo pacman -S easy-rsa
After installing Easy-RSA, you need to configure it for use with OpenVPN. By default, Easy-RSA stores all the files and keys in the /etc/easy-rsa directory. In order to work with Easy-RSA, change to this directory.
cd /etc/easy-rsa
Here, you will find a file named vars. This file contains variables that are used to configure Easy-RSA. You can edit this file to suit your needs, such as changing the default values for the Certificate Authority (CA) and the directory where the keys will be stored.
To edit the vars file, open it using a text editor like nano:
sudo nano vars
Make any changes you need to the variables in the file. For example, you can set the default country, state, and organization for your certificates:
set_var EASYRSA_REQ_COUNTRY "US"
set_var EASYRSA_REQ_PROVINCE "California"
set_var EASYRSA_REQ_CITY "San Francisco"
set_var EASYRSA_REQ_ORG "My Organization"
Save and close the file.
The next step is to generate a Certificate Authority (CA) using Easy-RSA. Run the following command:
./easyrsa init-pki
This command initializes a new public key infrastructure (PKI) and generates a new CA. The PKI is stored in the pki subdirectory of the current directory.
Now, generate the CA using the following command:
./easyrsa build-ca
This command generates a new root CA certificate and key, which can be used to sign client and server certificates.
In this tutorial, we walked you through the steps to install Easy-RSA on Arch Linux and configure it for use with OpenVPN. Now you are ready to generate client and server certificates, which can be used to secure your network traffic.
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