Certificate management¶

This section contains additional instructions/guides related to the certificate management in Plixer Scrutinizer.

For further information or assistance with these functions, contact Plixer Technical Support.

Certificate rotation/regeneration¶

The following certificate rotation utilities can be run to re-issue certificates and keys to address database communication issues:

Note

The optional DAYS flag can be used to set an expiry for the certificate(s) regenerated by each utility. Once they expire, the same command can be run again to re-issue certificates with new expiry dates.
These commands cannot be run from the SCRUTINIZER> prompt.

scrut_util --rotatecerts --<DAYS> <--reset> <--verbose>	Regenerates all certificates on all nodes, including any ML engines, with an optional expiry of the number of `DAYS` specified If the `reset` flag is included, the CA and Apache web server certificates on the primary reporter will also be regenerated.
scrut_util --httpdcerts --<DAYS> <--csr> <--verbose>	Regenerates the Apache web server certificate and key with an optional expiry of the number of `DAYS` specified The `csr` flag can be used to create a certificate signing request (CSR) using the current private key and user-configured subject in `/home/plixer/scrutinizer/files/scrutinizer.csr` instead of generating a new certificate.
set ssl on	Generates a new self-signed certificate (`/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca.crt`), private key (`/etc/pki/tls/private/ca.key`), and CSR (`/etc/pki/tls/private/ca.csr`) with the details entered The provided syntax must be run from the SCRUTINIZER> prompt. To run the command directly from the shell, use `scrut_util --set ssl --toggle [on\|off] --port <TCP_PORT> --country <COUNTRY> --state <STATE/PROVINCE> --city <CITY/LOCALITY> --org <ORG_NAME> --email <CONTACT_EMAIL> --name <COMMON_NAME> --keysize [1024\|2048\|4096]`
scrut_util --mlcerts --ip <IP_ADDRESS> --<DAYS> <--install> <--verbose>	Regenerates TLS certificates and private keys on the Plixer ML Engine node with the specified `IP_ADDRESS` with an optional expiry of the number of `DAYS` specified If the `install` flag is included, `setup.sh --reload-certs` will not be executed on the node.
scrut_util --pgcerts --<DAYS> <--reset> <--verbose>	Regenerates all certificates used for PostgreSQL connections on all nodes with an optional expiry of the number of `DAYS` specified If the `reset` flag is included, the CA certificate on the primary reporter will also be regenerated.

Wildcard certificates¶

If a signed wildcard certificate and key were generated with a passphrase, the passphrase must be removed from the private key to allow Plixer Scrutinizer to use the pair.

Copy the private key file (*.key) to /etc/pki/tls/private/.
Re-generate the key without a passphrase (replace ORIGINAL with the filename of the key):
```
openssl rsa -in /etc/pki/tls/private/ORIGINAL.key -out /etc/pki/tls/private/new.key
```
When prompted, enter the passphrase used for the original key.

This will create a new, unencrypted key named new.key in /etc/pki/tls/private/, which must be renamed to ca.key. If the key pair was originally created without a passphrase, it need only be renamed after being copied into the correct directory.

Full chain certificates¶

A full chain certificate or chain of trust can be created as follows:

Create the file ca_chain.crt under /etc/pki/tls/CA/.
Copy the contents of the intermediate CA .crt file into ca_chain.crt.
Copy the contents of the root CA .crt file into ca_chain.crt (after the intermediate CA).
Add the following line to /home/plixer/scrutinizer/files/conf/httpd-plixer.conf:
```
SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/pkl/tls/CA/ca_chain.crt
```

Restart the httpd service:

scrut_util --services --name httpd --switch restart

After the restart, the full chain certificate will be in use.

CA-signed distributed cluster certificates¶

To generate CSRs and install the signed keys for a distributed cluster, run the following scripts:

Note

These scripts should be run from the distributed cluster’s primary reporter as the plixer user and rely on Plixer Scrutinizer’s default SSH connectivity.
scrut_util --rotatecerts --reset (see above) can be used if either of these scripts causes unexpected issues or DB connection errors. However, any existing signed certificates will be lost.

home/scrutinizer/files/generate_requests.sh	Generates certificate signing requests (CSRs) for all TLS keys in a distributed cluster CSRs are saved to subdirectories in `/tmp/request` with `apache_server.csr` being the signing request for the primary reporter’s web server.
home/scrutinizer/files/install_certs.sh	Installs signed TLS certificates to all nodes in a distributed cluster `.cer` files should be saved to `/tmp/signed` following the path and filename conventions used by `generate_requests.sh` for the signing requests. The Certificate Authority’s root certificate should be saved as `ca.cer`.