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Chapter 9. Verifying system certificates using IdM Healthcheck

Learn more about identifying issues with system certificates in Identity Management (IdM) by using the Healthcheck tool.

Prerequisites

  • The Healthcheck tool is only available on RHEL 8.1 or newer.

9.1. System certificates Healthcheck tests

The Healthcheck tool includes several tests for verifying system, or Dogtag, certificates.

You can find all certificate-related tests under the ipahealthcheck.dogtag.ca source in the output of the ipa-healthcheck --list-sources command.

DogtagCertsConfigCheck

This test compares the CA (Certificate Authority) certificates in its NSS database to the same values stored in CS.cfg. If they do not match, the CA fails to start.

Specifically, it checks:

  • auditSigningCert cert-pki-ca against ca.audit_signing.cert
  • ocspSigningCert cert-pki-ca against ca.ocsp_signing.cert
  • caSigningCert cert-pki-ca against ca.signing.cert
  • subsystemCert cert-pki-ca against ca.subsystem.cert
  • Server-Cert cert-pki-ca against ca.sslserver.cert

If Key Recovery Authority (KRA) is installed, it also checks:

  • transportCert cert-pki-kra against ca.connector.KRA.transportCert
DogtagCertsConnectivityCheck

This test verifies connectivity. This test is equivalent to the ipa cert-show 1 command which checks the following:

  • The PKI proxy configuration in Apache
  • IdM being able to find a CA
  • The RA agent client certificate
  • The correctness of CA replies to requests

The test verifies that the ipa cert-show command can be executed and that an expected response is returned from the IdM CA - either the certificate itself or a not found response.

9.2. Screening system certificates using Healthcheck

Follow this procedure to run a standalone manual test of Identity Management (IdM) certificates using the Healthcheck tool.

Procedure

  • Enter:

    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap 
    # ipa-healthcheck --source=ipahealthcheck.dogtag.ca
    • The --source=ipahealthcheck.dogtag.ca option ensures that Healthcheck only performs the certificate tests.

An example of a successful test:

Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap 
{
  "source: ipahealthcheck.dogtag.ca",
  "check: DogtagCertsConfigCheck",
  "result: SUCCESS",
  "uuid: 9b366200-9ec8-4bd9-bb5e-9a280c803a9c",
  "when: 20191008135826Z",
  "duration: 0.252280",
  "kw:" {
    "key": "Server-Cert cert-pki-ca",
    "configfile":  "/var/lib/pki/pki-tomcat/conf/ca/CS.cfg"
    }
}

An example of a failed test:

Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap 
{
  "source: ipahealthcheck.dogtag.ca",
  "check: DogtagCertsConfigCheck",
  "result: CRITICAL",
  "uuid: 59d66200-1447-4b3b-be01-89810c803a98",
  "when: 20191008135912Z",
  "duration: 0.002022",
  "kw:" {
    "exception": "NSDB /etc/pki/pki-tomcat/alias not initialized",
    }
}
Note

Run the certificate tests on all IdM servers when trying to find an issue.

Additional resources

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