Include a Certificate Chain File in nginx

Sometimes you have to deliver the certificate authorities’ (CA) own certificates by using their SSL chain certificate.

The file is most likely provided by your CA as a .pem-file and if you are using Apache2 it can be easily integrated by adding the following line to your vhost-config:

SSLCertificateChainFile /path/to/chain.pem

But there is no such option in nginx. So what do you have to do now?

It’s really easy! Simply concatenate your domain’s certificate file and your CA’s chain file:

cat example.org.crt chain.pem > bundle.crt

Now you can include your bundled certificate-file into your nginx config just like you would do with your domain’s certificate file:

ssl_certificate bundle.crt

That’s it!