There is one thing to watch out when setting up a SSL certificate with Plesk, it may say “Unable to set the private key: Probably, the private key format is invalid.”
That is most probably if you used something like:
openssl genrsa -des3 -out server.key 1024
to generate your SSL key.
To fix the “problem”, all you have to do is:
openssl rsa -in server.key -out apache.key
And retry the job. The only drawback is, from now on your server key is not password protected.
p.s. Here are some nice manuals on setting up a Thawte SSL certificates(should work for others too), other then missing the clue about the password protected certificate the manual is great.
p.p.s. I hate “nice” web hosting management apps 
I like to do it in text files, it is slower, but its inevitable that one day you will have to setup something custom and there won’t be any option in the nice app to help you out. This is for big hosts and stuff, if it’s for small sites I’m all for Plesk & co. since it allows “normal” people to run a host.
Thanks mate.. You helped me out with this one.
Plesk was complaining about the key being invalid.
Do you know if there are any security issues in setting up your key without encryption?
Cheers,
Comment by Daniel Tome — February 14, 2008 @ 3:17 am
It’s not without encryption, it’s simply without a startup password.
Comment by admin — February 14, 2008 @ 9:52 am