OpenSSL

OpenSSL is a replacement for SSLeay secure socket layer.

This document reflects my real-world experience in building OpenSSL 0.9.4 (~1.6M) on a Slackware 4.0 Linux 2.2.10 box. A new version appears to come out every two or three months.

Obtaining OpenSSL

OpenSSL Tarball page at http://www.openssl.org/source/ will show you a list of mirror sites you can obtain the latest from. Again, these instructions pertain to just the openssl-0.9.4.tar.gz version.

Untaring

To untar the file, execute tar zxvf openssl-0.9.4.tar.gz. This will produce a subdirectory called openssl-0.9.4 with everything you need inside.

Installation instructions are convienently in a file called INSTALL, this file can be viewed with less INSTALL.

Configuring

Change into the openssl-0.9.4 directory with:
$ cd openssl-0.9.4

Start the configuration process to identify your platform and its capabilities:
$ ./config

To build the software, simply make it:
$ make

...the compile process will take a while to complete...

Test the build to make sure it worked:
$ make test

Now the big step, installing. You'll need to be root in order to do this next phase:
# make install

You'll find your new software is now located in /usr/local/ssl, be sure to check out the bin and include subdirectories. See the INSTALL and README files that explain how you need to specify #include in your source since the include files moved to a subdirectory.

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