Table of Contents
Authentication in the Globus Toolkit is based on X.509 certificates. This document describes how to acquire and use the certificates that you will need to authenticate yourself to Globus services.
In most cases, an individual will do the following:
- Acquire an user certificate from a certification authority (CA). This certificate will typically be valid for a year or more and will be stored in a file in the individual's home directory.
- Use the end-user certificate to create a proxy certificate, which will be used to authenticate the individual to grid services. Proxy certificates typically have a much shorter lifetime than end-user certificates.
Please see the Pre-WS A&A Command Reference.
The following are some common problems that may cause clients or servers to report that credentials are invalid:
Use grid-proxy-info to check whether the proxy credential has actually expired. If it has, generate a new proxy with grid-proxy-init.
This may cause the server or client to conclude that a credential has expired.
5.1.3. Your end-user certificate may have expired
Use grid-cert-info to check your certificate's expiration date. If it has expired, follow your CA's procedures to get a new one.
If the permissions on your proxy file are too lax (for example, if others can read your proxy file), Globus Toolkit clients will not use that file to authenticate. You can "fix" this problem by changing the permissions on the file or by destroying it (with grid-proxy-destroy) and creating a new one (with grid-proxy-init). However, it is still possible that someone else has made a copy of that file during the time that the permissions were wrong. In that case, they will be able to impersonate you until the proxy file expires or your permissions or end-user certificate are revoked, whichever happens first.
If the permissions on your end user certificate private key file are too lax (for example, if others can read the file), grid-proxy-init will refuse to create a proxy certificate. You can "fix" this by changing the permissions on the private key file; however, you will still have a much more serious problem: it's possible that someone has made a copy of your private key file. Although this file is encrypted, it is possible that someone will be able to decrypt the private key, at which point they will be able to impersonate you as long as your end user certificate is valid. You should contact your CA to have your end-user certificate revoked and get a new one.
Verify that the remote system is configured to trust the CA that issued your end-entity certificate. See the Administrator's Guide for details.
Verify that your system is configured to trust the remote CA (or that your environment is set up to trust the remote CA). See the Administrator's Guide for details.
It is sometimes difficult to distinguish between errors reported by the remote service regarding your credentials and errors reported by the client interface regarding the remote service's credentials. If you can't find anything wrong with your credentials, check for the same conditions (or ask a remote administrator to do so) on the remote system.
openssl verify -CApath /etc/grid-security/certificates -purpose sslclient ~/.globus/usercert.pem
openssl s_client -ssl3 -cert ~/.globus/usercert.pem -key ~/.globus/userkey.pem -CApath /etc/grid-security/certificates -connect <host:port>
Here <host:port> denotes the server and port you connect to.
If it prints an error and puts you back at the command prompt, then it typically means that the server has closed the connection, i.e. that the server was not happy with the client's certificate and verification. Check the SSL log on the server.
If the command "hangs" then it has actually opened a telnet style (but secure) socket, and you can "talk" to the server.
You should be able to scroll up and see the subject names of the server's verification chain:
depth=2 /DC=net/DC=ES/O=ESnet/OU=Certificate Authorities/CN=ESnet Root CA 1
verify return:1
depth=1 /DC=org/DC=DOEGrids/OU=Certificate Authorities/CN=DOEGrids CA 1
verify return:1
depth=0 /DC=org/DC=doegrids/OU=Services/CN=wiggum.mcs.anl.gov
verify return:1
In this case there were no errors. Errors would give you an extra line next to the subject name of the certificate that caused the error
The following are some common problems that may cause clients or servers to report that user are not authorized:
5.3.1. The content of the grid map file does not conform to the expected format
Use grid-mapfile-check-consistency to make sure that your gridmap conforms to the expected format.