Skip to content

Requesting InCommon IGTF Host Certificates

Many institutions in the United States already subscribe to InCommon and offer IGTF certificate services. If your institution is in the list of InCommon subscribers, continue with the instructions below. If your institution is not in the list, Let's Encrypt certificates do not meet your needs, and you do not have access to another IGTF CA subscription, please contact us.

As with all OSG software installations, there are some one-time (per host) steps to prepare in advance:

From a host that meets the above requirements, there are two options to get InCommon IGTF-accredited host certificates:

  1. Requesting certificates from a Registration Authority (RA): This requires a Certificate Signing Request (CSR), which can be generated with the osg-cert-request tool.
  2. Requesting certificates as an RA: As an RA, you can request, approve, and retrieve certificates yourself through the InCommon REST API using the osg-incommon-cert-request tool .

Install the osg-pki-tools where both command line tools are available:

[email protected] # yum install osg-pki-tools

Requesting certificates from a registration authority

  1. Generate a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) and private key using the osg-cert-request tool:

    [email protected] $ osg-cert-request --hostname <HOSTNAME> \
             --country <COUNTRY> \
             --state <STATE> \
             --locality <LOCALITY> \
             --organization <ORGANIZATION>

    You may also add DNS Subject Alternative Names (SAN) to the request by specifying any number of --altname <SAN>. For example, the following generates a CSR for test.opensciencegrid.org with foo.opensciencegrid.org and bar.opensciencegrid.org as SANs:

    [email protected] $ osg-cert-request --hostname test.opensciencegrid.org \
             --country US \
             --state Wisconsin \
             --locality Madison \
             --organization 'University of Wisconsin-Madison' \
             --altname foo.opensciencegrid.org \
             --altname bar.opensciencegrid.org

    If successful, the CSR will be named <HOSTNAME>.req and the private key will be named <HOSTNAME>-key.pem. Additional options and descriptions can be found here.

  2. Find your institution-specific InCommon contact and submit the CSR that you generated above. Make sure to request a 1-year IGTF Server Certificate for OTHER server software.

  3. After the certificate has been issued by your institution, download the host certificate only (not the full chain) to its intended host and copy over the key you generated above.

  4. Verify that the issuer CN field is InCommon IGTF Server CA:

    $ openssl x509 -in <PATH TO CERTIFICATE> -noout -issuer
issuer= /C=US/O=Internet2/OU=InCommon/CN=InCommon IGTF Server CA

    Where <PATH TO CERTIFICATE> is the file you downloaded in the previous step

  5. Install the host certificate and key:

    [email protected] # cp <PATH TO CERTIFICATE> /etc/grid-security/hostcert.pem
[email protected] # chmod 444 /etc/grid-security/hostcert.pem
[email protected] # cp <PATH TO KEY> /etc/grid-security/hostkey.pem
[email protected] # chmod 400 /etc/grid-security/hostkey.pem

    Where <PATH TO KEY> is the ".key" file you created in the first step

Requesting certificates as a registration authority

If you are a Registration Authority for your institution, skip ahead to this section. If you are not already a Registration Authority (RA) for your institution, you must request to be made one:

  1. Find your institution-specific InCommon contact (e.g. campus central IT)

  2. Request a Department Registration Authority user with SSL auto-approve enabled and a client certificate:

    • If they do not grant your request, you will not be able to request, approve, and retrieve certificates yourself. Instead, you must request certificates from your RA.
    • If they grant your request, you will receive an email with instructions for requesting your client certificate. Download the .p12 file and extract the certificate and key:
      [email protected] $ openssl pkcs12 -in incommon_file.p12 -nocerts -out ~/path_to_dir/incommon_user_key.pem
[email protected] $ openssl pkcs12 -in incommon_file.p12 -nokeys -out ~/path_to_dir/incommon_user_cert.pem

  3. Find your institution-specific organization and department codes at the InCommon Cert Manager (https://cert-manager.com/customer/InCommon). These are numeric codes that should be specified through the command line using the -O/--orgcode ORG,DEPT option:

    • Organization code is shown as OrgID under Settings > Organizations > Edit
    • Department code is shown as OrgID under Settings > Organizations > Departments > Edit

Once you have RA privileges, you may request, approve, and retrieve host certificates using osg-incommon-cert-request:

  • Requesting a certificate with a single hostname <HOSTNAME>:

    [email protected] $ osg-incommon-cert-request --username <INCOMMON_LOGIN> \
            --cert ~/path_to_dir/incommon_user_cert.pem \
            --pkey ~/path_to_dir/incommon_user_key.pem \
            --hostname <HOSTNAME>
            [--orgcode <ORG,DEPT>]

  • Requesting a certificate with Subject Alternative Names (SANs):

    [email protected] $ osg-incommon-cert-request --username <INCOMMON_LOGIN> \
            --cert ~/path_to_dir/incommon_user_cert.pem \
            --pkey ~/path_to_dir/incommon_user_key.pem \
            --hostname <HOSTNAME> \
            --altname <ALTNAME> \
            --altname <ALTNAME2>
            [--orgcode <ORG,DEPT>]

  • Requesting certificates in bulk using a hostfile name:

    [email protected] $ osg-incommon-cert-request --username <INCOMMON_LOGIN> \
            --cert ~/path_to_dir/incommon_user_cert.pem \
            --pkey ~/path_to_dir/incommon_user_key.pem \
            --hostfile ~/path_to_file/hostfile.txt \
            [--orgcode <ORG,DEPT>]

    Where the contents of hostfile.txt contain one hostname and any number of SANs per line:

    hostname01.yourdomain
hostname02.yourdomain hostnamealias.yourdomain hostname03.yourdomain
hostname04.yourdomain hostname05.yourdomain

References