# Issues w/ client certificates from a self-signed CA

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/issues-w-client-certificates-from-a-self-signed-ca/222014>\
**Category:** NGINX\
**Created:** [August 9, 2012, 6:36am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/issues-w-client-certificates-from-a-self-signed-ca/222014 "2012-08-09T06:36:22Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![aris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/258eb7/32.png) [@aris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/aris)\
**Post date:** [August 9, 2012, 6:36am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/issues-w-client-certificates-from-a-self-signed-ca/222014/1 "2012-08-09T06:36:22Z")

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Hi, I’m trying to get client certificate authentication going using  
client certificates signed by a self-signed certificate authority  
created with openssl. After getting a bunch of ‘400 The SSL certificate  
error’ errors I put nginx in debug mode and saw the following:

2012/08/08 23:22:14 [info] 27556#0: \*1 client SSL certificate verify  
error: (18:self signed certificate) while reading client request  
headers, client: 50.18.140.88, server: \_, request: “GET /blah/  
HTTP/1.1”, host: “[example.com:8080](http://example.com:8080)”

I see that error 18 when I try to verify the client cert with the CA  
cert via openssl as well, but the verify still returns an ‘OK’ so it  
seems like it’s more of a warning. Would that lead to the 400 error  
that my client is seeing? If so, is there anyway to get nginx to accept  
certificates signed by a self-signed CA?

I’m running nginx 1.1.19 on Ubuntu 12.04. Let me know if there’s any  
other info you might need - thanks!

–  
Michael Barrett  
removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid