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Chapter 71. Renewing expired system certificates when IdM is offline

If a system certificate has expired, Identity Management (IdM) fails to start. IdM supports renewing system certificates even in this situation by using the ipa-cert-fix tool.

Prerequisites

  • IdM is installed only on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.1 or later.
  • Ensure that the LDAP service is running by entering the ipactl start --ignore-service-failures command on the host.

71.1. Renewing expired system certificates on a CA renewal server

Follow this procedure to apply the ipa-cert-fix tool on expired IdM certificates.

Important

If you run the ipa-cert-fix tool on a CA (Certificate Authority) host that is not the CA renewal server, and the utility renews shared certificates, that host automatically becomes the new CA renewal server in the domain. There must always be only one CA renewal server in the domain to avoid inconsistencies.

Prerequisites

  • Log in to the server with administration rights

Procedure

  1. (Optional) Backup the system. This is heavily recommended, as ipa-cert-fix makes irreversible changes to nssdbs. Because ipa-cert-fix also makes changes to the LDAP, it is recommended to backup the entire cluster as well.

  2. Start the ipa-cert-fix tool to analyze the system and list expired certificates that require renewal: 

    # ipa-cert-fix
...
The following certificates will be renewed:

Dogtag sslserver certificate:
  Subject: CN=ca1.example.com,O=EXAMPLE.COM 201905222205
  Serial:  13
  Expires: 2019-05-12 05:55:47
...
Enter "yes" to proceed:

  3. Enter yes to start the renewal process: 

    Enter "yes" to proceed: yes
Proceeding.
Renewed Dogtag sslserver certificate:
  Subject: CN=ca1.example.com,O=EXAMPLE.COM 201905222205
  Serial:  268369925
  Expires: 2021-08-14 02:19:33
...

Becoming renewal master.
The ipa-cert-fix command was successful

    It can take up to one minute before ipa-cert-fix renews all expired certificates.

  4. Optionally, verify that all services are now running: 

    # ipactl status
Directory Service: RUNNING
krb5kdc Service: RUNNING
kadmin Service: RUNNING
httpd Service: RUNNING
ipa-custodia Service: RUNNING
pki-tomcatd Service: RUNNING
ipa-otpd Service: RUNNING
ipa: INFO: The ipactl command was successful

At this point, certificates have been renewed and services are running. The next step is to check other servers in the IdM domain.

Note

If you need to repair certificates across multiple CA servers:

  1. After ensuring that LDAP replication is working across the topology, first run ipa-cert-fix on one CA server, according to the above procedure.
  2. Before you run ipa-cert-fix on another CA server, trigger Certmonger renewals for shared certificates via getcert-resubmit (on the other CA server), to avoid unnecessary renewal of shared certificates.

71.2. Verifying other IdM servers in the IdM domain after renewal

After the renewing the CA renewal server’s certificates with the ipa-cert-fix tool, you must:

  • Restart all other Identity Management (IdM) servers in the domain.
  • Check if certmonger renewed certificates.
  • If there are other Certificate Authority (CA) replicas with expired system certificates, renew those certificates with the ipa-cert-fix tool as well.

Prerequisites

  • Log in to the server with administration rights.

Procedure

  1. Restart IdM with the --force parameter: 

    # ipactl restart --force

    With the --force parameter, the ipactl utility ignores individual service startup failures. For example, if the server is also a CA with expired certificates, the pki-tomcat service fails to start. This is expected and ignored because of using the --force parameter.

  2. After the restart, verify that the certmonger service renewed the certificates (certificate status says MONITORING): 

    # getcert list | egrep '^Request|status:|subject:'
Request ID '20190522120745':
        status: MONITORING
        subject: CN=IPA RA,O=EXAMPLE.COM 201905222205
Request ID '20190522120834':
        status: MONITORING
        subject: CN=Certificate Authority,O=EXAMPLE.COM 201905222205
...

    It can take some time before certmonger renews the shared certificates on the replica.

  3. If the server is also a CA, the previous command reports CA_UNREACHABLE for the certificate the pki-tomcat service uses: 

    Request ID '20190522120835':
        status: CA_UNREACHABLE
        subject: CN=ca2.example.com,O=EXAMPLE.COM 201905222205
...

  4. To renew this certificate, use the ipa-cert-fix utility: 

    # ipa-cert-fix
Dogtag sslserver certificate:
  Subject: CN=ca2.example.com,O=EXAMPLE.COM
  Serial:  3
  Expires: 2019-05-11 12:07:11

Enter "yes" to proceed: yes
Proceeding.
Renewed Dogtag sslserver certificate:
  Subject: CN=ca2.example.com,O=EXAMPLE.COM 201905222205
  Serial:  15
  Expires: 2019-08-14 04:25:05

The ipa-cert-fix command was successful

Now, all IdM certificates have been renewed and work correctly.