This directory (/etc/ssl) is provided as a courtesy attempt to provide
compatibility with software which assumes its existence. It is not a
supported or canonical location. Software which assumes and relies on
the existence and layout of this directory is making a wrong assumption
(this directory is not any kind of 'standard', it is a configuration
detail of Debian and its derivatives) and should be improved. No
software packaged in this distribution should use this directory.

An attempt is made to make the layout of /etc/ssl/certs match that
provided by Debian: it is an OpenSSL 'CApath'-style hashed directory
of individual certificate files, and also contains a certificate bundle
file named ca-certificates.crt, as Debian does. It also contains a
bundle named ca-bundle.crt, as RHEL and Fedora have long provided
such a file, and it is possible some software has come to expect its
existence.

The certificates files and the bundle files are in fact symlinks to
some of the output of the 'update-ca-trust' script which forms a part
of a system of consolidated CA certificates. Please refer to the
update-ca-trust(8) manual page for additional information.
