Can someone explain a bit about these ssl prompts?

[bangshws]

Hi guys,
My knowledge about SSL is quite limited except the fact that I know we have a private key and a public key. But I'm not very sure about CA certificate things like that. My question is can you please explain how those things are used in the following :

touch smtpd.key
chmod 600 smtpd.key
openssl genrsa 1024 > smtpd.key
openssl req -new -key smtpd.key -x509 -days 3650 -out smtpd.crt # has prompts
openssl req -new -x509 -extensions v3_ca -keyout cakey.pem -out cacert.pem -days 3650 # has prompts

What is private key, public key and thing like that?

Thanks,

[scathefire]

genrsa is used to generate a private key

[jippie]

If you are unfamiliar with private/pubic keys, maybe you should check Public-key cryptography - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia for an overview.