my name is mwd

As far as I can tell, if you’re trying to do anything with Client Authentication using CA Certificates, then avoid Safari like the plague, as it can handle only one CA certificate – any more, and it appears to pick one at random. I’d rant at you all about it (I know how you like that), but someone has already done a good job of that, so I’ll settle for pointing you in that direction. It’s a shame, as Safari is otherwise a nice browser, but they appear to have dropped the ball here.

Instead, Firefox does everything nicely – though ironically, as I don’t otherwise use Firefox, I only have the one CA certificate there :)

On a more positive note though, if you’re trying to set up self-certified CA Certificates for use with Apache, then this guide does a reasonable job. I imagine most people with have properly verified server certificates, in which case you can just ignore steps two and three, with the exception of making note to set the SSLCACertificateFile variable in your virtual host settings (says the voice of experience :).