Synopsis

certmonger bug fix and enhancement update

Type/Severity

Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

Updated certmonger packages that fix several bugs and add various enhancements
are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

Description

The certmonger daemon monitors certificates which have been registered with it,
and as a certificate's not-valid-after date approaches, the daemon can
optionally attempt to obtain a fresh certificate from a supported CA.

The certmonger packages have been upgraded to upstream version 0.61, which
provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version.
(BZ#827611)

This update also fixes the following bugs:

• When certmonger was set up to not attempt to obtain a new certificate and the

certificate's valid remaining time crossed a configured time to live (TTL)
threshold, certmonger warned of a certificate's impending not-valid-after date.
Certmonger then immediately logged the warning again, and continued to do so
indefinitely, causing the /var/log/messages file to fill up with warnings. This
bug has been fixed and certmonger returns a warning again only when another
configured TTL threshold is crossed or the service is restarted. (BZ#810016)

• When certmonger attempts to save a certificate to an NSS database, it

necessarily opens that database for writing. Previously, if any other process,
including any other certmonger tasks that could require access to that database,
had the database open for writing, that database could become corrupted. This
update backports changes from later versions of certmonger which change its
behavior. Now, actions that could result in database modifications are only
performed one at a time. (BZ#893611)

All users of certmonger are advised to upgrade to these updated packages which
fix these bugs and add these enhancements.

Solution

Before applying this update, make sure all previously-released errata
relevant to your system have been applied.

This update is available via the Red Hat Network. Details on how to
use the Red Hat Network to apply this update are available at
https://access.redhat.com/knowledge/articles/11258

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 6 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 6 ppc64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Scientific Computing 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support (for IBM z Systems) 6 s390x

Fixes

• BZ - 810016 - After notifying that a certificate is no longer valid, certmonger shouldn't do so again right away.

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)