kaikramer / keystore-explorer

KeyStore Explorer is a free GUI replacement for the Java command-line utilities keytool and jarsigner.
https://keystore-explorer.org/
GNU General Public License v3.0
1.7k stars 275 forks source link

Generate key pair without creating a certificate #343

Closed jgrateron closed 2 years ago

jgrateron commented 2 years ago

Can this feature be incorporated? In the tools menu there is an option to generate a pair of keys, first the algorithm is requested and then the (private, public) key pair is displayed on a dialog in PEM format.

kaikramer commented 2 years ago

You cannot save a keypair without a certificate in a keystore. So this feature would be another one that seems a bit out of place in a tool that is a keystore manager.

Why not simply complete the current process with certificate creation? It's not much more effort if you don't include any extensions and leave the key password empty. And then do "Export Key Pair" as PEM.

jgrateron commented 2 years ago

The idea is not to store the key pair in the store, just to make this process easier for the user. Maybe we can create a series of tutorials or case studies on the web https://keystore-explorer.org/.

It occurs to me.

Create your own CA for localhost, openvpn, postgres, mysql, website and generate key pair.

kaikramer commented 2 years ago

I understand that the goal is not to store the key pair in a key store, and that is exactly what I don't like about it. Either you want to work with keystores then KSE is exactly the right tool or you want to do something else then KSE still might be helpful but you have to accept that KSE uses keystores as its "database".

I agree that it would be helpful for a lot of users to have some kind of "how-to" documentation for tasks that fall into this category of "possible to achieve with KSE but not obvious for many users". Actually I have planned to do this for a long time. The problem is that I just don't have enough time. Even the documentation updates for the v. 5.5.0 release are not done yet. I could really need the help of users with English as their native language here...

jgrateron commented 2 years ago

That is something that I have observed, kse is very flexible and many things can be created with the certificates, but there is not much documentation or examples that help the newest.

For my part I am going to create some tutorial videos in Spanish and maybe someone will help us in its English version.

Thank you