Tested on OS X El Capitan (10.11.6).
You've created a CA cert for use on your private network. Typically this certificate will be used to sign server certificates used to provide TLS handshaking for web servers and web API endpoints.
You need to add the certificate to your Mac's trusted store; specifically, you need to add it to the System keychain. You can do that with this command from an admin user account:
sudo security add-trusted-cert -d -r trustRoot -k "/Library/Keychains/System.keychain" "~/some-dir/rootCAcert.pem"
Or you could launch the Keychain Access application, unlock the System keychain, and then import the CA certificate.
Because the certificate is self-signed, and because the private key is not in the keychain, the certificate you just imported is not trusted. To make Safari and OS X trust the cert, you'll need to use the Keychain Access application.
Launch Keychain Access. In the nav bar on the left, select the System keychain and select the Certificates category. You should see the certificate you just imported, probably with a red 'x' on it (indicating it is not trusted).
Unlock the System keychain. Then do a Get Info on the certificate and expand the Trust setting. Then change "When using this certificate" to Always Trust. Close the dialog. Then, finally, lock the System keychain.
Thanks to this post for the pointer to the security
CLI utility.
Do man security
for more info and other useful commands related to the OS X keychain.
© 2016 Dave Hein
This work by Dave Hein is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.