HCoop Git - hcoop/zz_old/ikiwiki/blob - DomTool/SslProcedures.mdwn

   1 '''Note''': You can generally avoid worrying about these details by using the scripts described in DomTool/AdminProcedures. The instructions here are mostly of interest to people implementing those scripts.
   2
   3 These instructions assume you are running as a user in group `wheel` on `deleuze.hcoop.net`.
   4
   5 = Creating a certificate authority =
   6
   7 I followed the instructions on this page:
   8   http://sial.org/howto/openssl/ca/
   9
  10 This blog post revealed the source of a puzzling error:
  11   http://ilovett.com/blog/projects/debian-apache-ssl
  12 It turns out leaving some fields (like the city name for your new certificate) blank leads to baffling messages!
  13
  14 Extracting the relevant commands from the Makefile available at the former page, we run these commands to create our CA:
  15 {{{mkdir crl newcerts private
  16 chmod go-rwx private
  17 echo '01' > serial
  18 touch index
  19 # NOTE use "-newkey rsa:2048" if running OpenSSL 0.9.8a or higher
  20 openssl req -nodes -config openssl.cnf -days 1825 -x509 -newkey rsa -out ca-cert.pem -outform PEM}}}
  21
  22 Now the directory structure of our CA exists, and we have the certificate we will use to sign certificates.
  23
  24 = Creating a certificate for a node or user =
  25
  26 I followed the instructions on these pages:
  27   http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=openssl-users&m=97049654211960&w=2
  28
  29   http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/interactive/ssl-tcp.html
  30
  31 The commands to run are:
  32 {{{openssl genrsa -out serverkey.pem
  33 openssl req -new -key serverkey.pem -out newreq.pem -days 365
  34 cat newreq.pem serverkey.pem > new.pem
  35 openssl ca -config /etc/domtool/openssl.cnf -policy policy_anything -out servercert.pem -infiles new.pem}}}
  36 replacing `serverkey.pem` and `servercert.pem` with appropriate names for your new key and certificate, respectively.  The change I made from [http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=openssl-users&m=97049654211960&w=2 the cited source] is to include the `-config` flag to reference the modified config file obtained from [http://sial.org/howto/openssl/ca/ the page about creating a CA].
  37
  38 Once I figure out the final directory layout, there will be instructions here on where to put these files once they're created.
  39
  40 = Baffling things that can happen =
  41
  42 If `openssl ca` tells you this:
  43 {{{failed to update database
  44 TXT_DB error number 2}}}
  45
  46 it means that you have it configured not to sign a certificate for the same user multiple times, but you've gone ahead and asked it to do so anyway.  Add this line to the section for your default CA in `openssl.cnf`:
  47 {{{
  48 unique_subject = no}}}
  49
  50 If you've already been signing some keys and you want to keep what you've done so far, you may also need to make similar changes in `index.attr` and possibly `index.attr.old`.