easy-rsa is a CLI utility to build and manage a PKI CA. In layman's terms, this means to create a root certificate authority, and request and sign certificates, including intermediate CAs and certificate revocation lists (CRL).
If you are looking for release downloads, please see the releases section on GitHub. Releases are also available as source checkouts using named tags.
For 3.x project documentation and usage, see the README.quickstart.md file or the more detailed docs under the doc/ directory. The .md files are in Markdown format and can be converted to html files as desired for release packages, or read as-is in plaintext.
Currently, Easy-RSA development co-exists with OpenVPN even though they are separate projects. The following resources are good places as of this writing to seek help using Easy-RSA:
The openvpn-users mailing list is a good place to post usage or help questions.
Users of GitHub can report problems to the Easy-RSA issues list.
The easy-rsa master branch is currently tracking development for the 3.x release cycle. Please note that, at any given time, master may be broken. Feel free to create issues against master, but have patience when using the master branch. It is recommended to use a release, and priority will be given to bugs identified in the most recent release.
The prior 2.x and 1.x versions are available as release branches for tracking and possible back-porting of relevant fixes.
Branch layout is:
master <- Active: v3.2.x - Rolling.
v3.<N>.<N>-<LABEL> Active: Development branches.
testing Sandbox: Subject to change without notice.
v3.1.8 Sunset: Bugfix only for v3.1.7
The following are NOT compatible with OpenSSL version 3:
v3.0.6 Inactive: Archived.
v3.0.5 Inactive: Archived.
v3.0.4 Inactive: Archived.
release/3.0 Inactive: Archived.
release/2.x Inactive: Archived.
release/1.x Inactive: Unmaintained.
LICENSING info for 3.x is in the COPYING.md file
Please refer to: doc/EasyRSA-Contributing.md
We are attempting to adhere to the POSIX standard, which can be found here: