Install OpenSSL

The section below describes how to install OpenSSL on your Linux host. Please use the steps relevant to your operating system.

RHEL / CentOS 8.x

dnf update
dnf install openssl

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

Install dependencies

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt install build-essential checkinstall zlib1g-dev -y

Download OpenSSL

cd /usr/local/src/
wget https://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-1.1.1k.tar.gz
tar -xf openssl-1.1.1k.tar.gz
cd openssl-1.1.1k.tar.gz

Install and compile OpenSSL

./config --prefix=/usr/local/ssl --openssldir=/usr/local/ssl shared zlib
make
make test

Wait for the compile process to complete and then run

make install

Configure link libraries

Configure the shared libraries for OpenSSL. The new OpenSSL binary will load library files from the '/usr/local/ssl/lib' directory.

cd /etc/ld.so.conf.d/
nano openssl-1.1.1k.conf

Add the following line to the conf file and save.

/usr/local/ssl/lib

Reload the dynamic link.

sudo ldconfig -v

Configure OpenSSL Binary

Replace the default openssl binary which is in '/usr/bin/openssl or /bin/openssl' with the new version in '/usr/local/ssl/bin/openssl'.

Backup the binary files

mv /usr/bin/c_rehash /usr/bin/c_rehash.BEKUP
mv /usr/bin/openssl /usr/bin/openssl.BEKUP

Edit the /etc/environment file and update the path

nano /etc/environment

Add the following to the end of the PATH variable

:/usr/local/ssl/bin

Reload the environment variable.

source /etc/environment
echo $PATH

Validate the version

You can validate the version by running openssl version -a again.