Bug#465865: ssl-cert taking too long to install

[Colin Wetherbee <cww@denterprises.org>]

Colin Wetherbee wrote:
>  1993 ttyp2    S      0:00  |                           \_ /bin/bash -e 
> /usr/sbin/make-ssl-cert generate-default-snakeoil
>  1997 ttyp2    R     31:52  |                               \_ openssl 
> req -config /tmp/tmp.XXXXo03KzO -new -x509 -days 3650 -nodes -out 
> /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem -keyout 
> /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key

My work-around:

Between the 'else' and the 'fi' near the bottom of 
/usr/sbin/make-ssl-cert, comment everything out and add the following line.

touch /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key

It seems to work well enough so far.  At least ssl-cert shows as being 
installed, so apt-get can get along with installing other packages.

What is the purpose of generating this snakeoil certificate, anyway?

Colin