Requesting or Renewing Host certificates

This guide describes how to request a new host certificate or renew an existing one, and what to do with the new/renewed certificate.

If the host already has a valid certificate, skip step 1a) and continue with step 1b)

1a) Request a new host certificate

To request a new host certificate, follow the procedure on the Dutchgrid CA website. Part of this procedure involves downloading and executing a shell script. Executing the script has to be done as user root on server vlaai, in directory /export/perm/share/grid-security/hostname/year (which should probably be created first!). For example, for host graszode in year 2008:

# mkdir -p /export/perm/share/grid-security/graszode/2008
# cd /export/perm/share/grid-security/graszode/2008
# sh ./makerequest.sh .

This will create a few files, including one called userkey.pem

Complete the administrative procedure as described on the CA web page and continue with step 2).

1b) Renewing an existing (valid) host certificate

To renew a host certificate, follow the procedure on the Dutchgrid CA website. Part of this procedure involves downloading and executing a shell script. Executing the script has to be done as user root on server vlaai. Create a new directory /export/perm/share/grid-security/hostname/year to hold the new key/certificate pair. Then execute the downloaded script, providing the existing certificate as parameter (according to convention, it should be present in the directory corresponding to the previous year) and use options -d to store the output files in the desired directory:

# mkdir -p /export/perm/share/grid-security/tbn01/2008
# cd /export/perm/share/grid-security/tbn01/2008
# ls -l ../2007/usercert.pem
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5146 Jan 30  2007 ../2007/usercert.pem
# dca-rekey-pack.sh -d . ../2007/usercert.pem

This will create a few files, including one called userkey.pem

Complete the administrative procedure as described on the CA web page and continue with step 2).

2) Installing the key/certificate pair on the host

After some time, the CA will send a mail with the location of the generated host certificate. As root on vlaai, download the certificate from the given location into the directory where the output files of the request are stored. Rename the downloaded certificate to usercert.pem.

# cd /export/perm/share/grid-security/tbn01/2008
# wget link-to-host-certificate
# mv WXYZ.pem usercert.pem

In the parent directory, /export/perm/share/grid-security/hostname, two symbolic links need to be created that point to the most recent host key and certificate (if they already exist, remove the links first).

# cd ..
# ls -l user*.pem
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 Aug  4 18:25 usercert.pem -> 2007/usercert.pem
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 Aug  4 18:25 userkey.pem -> 2007/userkey.pem
# rm -f usercert.pem userkey.pem
# ln -s 2008/usercert.pem
# ln -s 2008 userkey.pem

In order to allow the host to retrieve its host key (and certificate), create a file release.state with a recent time stamp (still to be done as root in the directory /export/perm/share/grid-security/hostname):

# touch release.state
# chown apache:apache release.state