I got it working!!
I used the next. Ran it
http://curl.haxx.se/lxr/source/lib/mk-ca-bundle.pl
And, doing so, created: ca-bundle.crt
al@P5Q:~/.ssh$ pwd
/home/al/.ssh
al@P5Q:~/.ssh$ ls
ca-bundle.crt
root@P5Q:~# removepkg curl-7.19.2-i486-1
From a Slackware mirror, I downloaded the "curl" source folder of files (source for curl)
I added one line into the configure section of the slackbuild, thus:
./configure \
--prefix=/usr \
--mandir=/usr/man \
--with-ca-bundle=/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt \
$SSLOPT
The added 1 liner is above $SSLOPT (permanently points it to the cert bundle).
Then I built my _ac package of curl:
root@P5Q:~# sh ./curl_ac.SlackBuild
Then I installed this new curl:
root@P5Q:~# installpkg curl-7.19.2-i486-1_ac.tgz
Next it can be seen that I sym linked from where it is this new curl looks for the cert bundle to the nice newly created cert bundle, created from the Perl script listed above.
root@P5Q:/etc/ssl/certs# pwd
/etc/ssl/certs
root@P5Q:/etc/ssl/certs# ls -la
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-02-26 22:22 ./
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 2009-02-26 01:06 ../
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 27 2009-02-26 22:22 ca-certificates.crt -> /home/al/.ssh/ca-bundle.crt
al@P5Q:/var/log/packages$ lsg curl
curl-7.19.2-i486-1_ac
al@P5Q:/var/log/packages$ lsg esn
esniper-2-19-0-i486-1
It all works superbly now!!
What I don't know is if there's any .config or .rc file for curl (set the path there to the cert bundle instead of doing so in the ./configure).
A second thing I don't know is if there still was a default path in curl for the cert bundle or if they also took this (said default path) out since they have discontinued shipping a cert bundle with curl.
BTW I do not know why I munged ebay and esniper in my very first post -- it was rather late that night -- things that howl at the moon sometimes come out late at night . . .
OTOH, *sometimes* some of the best creativity shows its head late at night ("The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe, for some reason, I know not why, comes to mind).
I did not ask anyone to read my drivel. I only had pointed to this thread in reference to ***the relevant openssl error message is in this thread***
That directive would have put me in "scan" mode -- ie quickly scan up and down until I quickly found "error". No reading of drivel. Done. Over with.
Well, burning the late lamp hour and all . . . this has been good. I know way much more now on curl and openssl than I did before all of this started.
--
Alan.