Importing Certificate Chains
722
Red Hat Certificate System Administrator’s Guide • September 2005
•
PKCS #7 certificate chain
This is a PKCS #7
SignedData
object. The only significant field in the
SignedData
object is the certificates. In particular, the signature and the contents are ignored. In
future versions of the software, the CRLs will also be used. The PKCS #7 format
allows multiple certificates to be downloaded at once. See “Importing Certificate
Chains,” on page 722 for more information about handling multiple certificates.
•
Red Hat Certificate Sequence
This is a simpler format for downloading certificate chains. It consists of a PKCS #7
ContentInfo
structure, wrapping a sequence of certificates. The value of the
contentType
field should be
redhat-cert-sequence
(see “Object Identifiers,” on
page 724), while the content field has the following structure:
CertificateSequence ::= SEQUENCE OF Certificate
This format allows multiple certificates to be downloaded at once. See “Importing
Certificate Chains,” on page 722 for more information about handling multiple
certificates.
Text Formats
Any of the above binary formats can also be imported in text form. The text form begins
with the following line:
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
Following this line is the certificate data, which can be in any of the binary formats just
described. This data should be base 64 encoded as described by RFC 1113. The data is
followed by this line:
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
Importing Certificate Chains
Several of the supported formats can contain multiple certificates. When the Red Hat
certificate decoder encounters a collection of certificates, it handles them as follows:
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The first certificate is processed in a context-specific manner, which varies according
to how it is being imported. For Communicator, this handling depends upon the MIME
content type that is used on the object being downloaded. For Red Hat servers, it
depends upon the options selected in the server administration interface.
Summary of Contents for CERTIFICATE 7.1 ADMINISTRATOR
Page 1: ...Administrator s Guide Red Hat Certificate System Version7 1 September 2005 ...
Page 22: ...22 Red Hat Certificate System Administrator s Guide September 2005 ...
Page 128: ...Cloning a CA 128 Red Hat Certificate System Administrator s Guide September 2005 ...
Page 368: ...ACL Reference 368 Red Hat Certificate System Administrator s Guide September 2005 ...
Page 460: ...Constraints Reference 460 Red Hat Certificate System Administrator s Guide September 2005 ...
Page 592: ...CRL Extension Reference 592 Red Hat Certificate System Administrator s Guide September 2005 ...