How to pass arguments like “Country Name” to OpenSSL when creating self signed certificate?

Question

I can create a self-signed certificate using this command

openssl req -new -newkey rsa:2048 -days 365 -nodes -x509 -keyout server.key -out server.crt

But is it possible to pass arguments like “Country Name,” “State or Province Name” etc. to OpenSSL to automate this process?

Answer 1

This website explains very well how to do this:

The magic of CSR generation without being prompted for values which go in the certificate's subject field, is in the -subj option.

-subj arg
  Replaces subject field of input request with specified data and outputs modified request.
    The arg must be formatted as /type0=value0/type1=value1/type2=...,
    characters may be escaped by \ (backslash), no spaces are skipped.

For example:

openssl ... -subj "/C=GB/ST=London/L=London/O=Global Security/OU=IT Department/CN=example.com"

See more details on the page I linked above.