If you’ve configured new SSL certificates on a server, you might want to watch for them to take effect and/or verify that they’re configured correctly. You can use an OpenSSL tool to do this (there is supposed to be an underscore: “s_client”):

openssl s_client -connect <hostname>:443 -servername <hostname>

This will print a barrage of information. For the purpose indicated above, you might only be interested in the very top portion:

$ openssl s_client -connect www.google.com:443 -servername www.google.com
CONNECTED(00000003)
depth=2 C = US, O = GeoTrust Inc., CN = GeoTrust Global CA
verify error:num=20:unable to get local issuer certificate
verify return:0
---
Certificate chain
 0 s:/C=US/ST=California/L=Mountain View/O=Google Inc/CN=www.google.com
   i:/C=US/O=Google Inc/CN=Google Internet Authority G2
 1 s:/C=US/O=Google Inc/CN=Google Internet Authority G2
   i:/C=US/O=GeoTrust Inc./CN=GeoTrust Global CA
 2 s:/C=US/O=GeoTrust Inc./CN=GeoTrust Global CA
   i:/C=US/O=Equifax/OU=Equifax Secure Certificate Authority
---

Under “Certificate chain”, there will be a list of all the certificates you’ve configured for the hostname. For example, if you configure one certificate (for a well-known authority) there will be one item, or if you configure a regular and an IA certificate (for lesser known authorities), there will be two.

The item (0) applies to your hostname, and each subsequently higher certificate represents a higher certificate authority. The last line of each item matches the first of the next item.