I've been playing around with the apache and our virtual hosts.  I am
well aware that I could have different certs for each IP address if I
were using IP based virtual hosting but I'm using name based virtual
hosts.

I host a variety of domains which are not at all subdomains of my main 
domain.  What I would like to do is have one cert for all my domains.

I sort of have it working with name based virtual hosting, but in some
cases, I get the following warning in Internet Explorer:

"The name on the security certificate does not match the name of the
site."

It appears that some web browsers, Netscape for example, support a *
as a wild card in the CN.  For example CN=*grant.org.  There's also
some talk on Microsoft's web site of some versions of IE supporting
this too.  Though, apparently not 5.01 running on windows 98 or me. 

The cases seem to be:

1) I generate a cert with CN=grant.org.  No complaints when I connect
to https://grant.org.  Both Netscape & IE complain if I connect to
www.grant.org or any other of my domains.

2) I generate a cert with CN=*grant.org.  No complaints when I connect 
to https://www.grant.org or https://grant.org from Netscape.  IE
complains that the name is incorrect.  I can import the self-signed
cert into both IE's and Netscape's trusted root ca list.

3) I generate a cert with CN=*.  No complaints when I connect to any
of my domains with Netscape, however IE complains that the name is
incorrect.  I can import the self-signed cert into Netscape's trusted
root ca list but NOT IE's.

Can someone tell me if there is a right way to generate a cert that
works with more than one site with the various different browsers out
there? 

Michael Grant
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