Netscape Certificate Management System Release Notes

Version: 6.01

Updated on: May 28, 2002

 
These release notes contain important information available at the time of the version 6.01 release of Netscape Certificate Management System (CMS). Installation requirements, known problems, and other late-breaking issues are addressed here. Read this document before you begin installing and using Certificate Management System.

Check the Red Hat Certificate System site prior to installing and setting up your software and then periodically thereafter to obtain the latest release notes and manuals.

These release notes contain the following sections:


What's New in This Release

This release of Certificate Management System contains a few enhancements and includes fixes to some of the problems noticed in earlier releases. This section summarizes the enhancements/changes made in the product.

This release of Certificate Management System
The table below lists problems that have been fixed since the release of Certificate Management System 6.0.

Bug Number
Description
604453
The problem of CMS Installation Wizard prompting for a password for the hardware cryptographic token, with its own keypad for entering PINs, has been fixed. If you use a hardware token for CMS keys and certificates, you no longer get prompted for a password in the last screen of the Installation Wizard, and you are able to complete the installation successfully.
604215
In the CMS Console, changing the default certificate-signing algorithm from MD5RSA to SHA1RSA or MD2RSA resulted in an error. This problem has been fixed.
604212
In the CMS Installation Wizard and Certificate Setup Wizard, you can now set validity periods for certificates up to the year 2037; in the previous version, you could select up to the year 2032 as the validity period.
The reason for not being able to select validity periods beyond year 2037 is that POSIX timestamps used in most UNIX systems are 32-bit signed integers. This results in an available period of 2^31 seconds or about 68 years. The epoch is 1970-01-01 00:00:00, so the counter will overflow sometime in January 2038.
603353
The CMS Customization Guide now covers the changes made to the HTTP interface of the product.


Software/Hardware Requirements

This section contains the following information:

Supported Platforms

This release of Certificate Management System is supported on the following operating-system platforms:
 
RedHat Linux Platform Requirements
OS Version Redhat Linux 7.2; Kernel Revision: 2.4.7-10
Redhat Linux Advanced Server; Kernel Revision: 2.4.9-e.3
CPU 350 MHz or higher, Pentium compatible.
RAM 256 MB (required)
Hard disk storage space requirements Total required is approximately 400 MB, as follows: 
  • Total transient space required during installation: 100 MB
  • Hard disk storage space required for installation:
    • Space required for setup, configuration, and running the server: approximately 250 MB
    • Additional space to allow for database growth in pilot deployment: approximately 50 MB
    • Total disk storage space for installation: approximately 300 MB
Other Requirements You must install as root in order to use well-known port numbers (such as 389) that are less than 1024. If you do not plan to use port numbers less than 1024, you do not need to install as root. If you plan to run as root, you should also install as root and specify nobody as the default run-as user and group.
Sun Solaris Platform Requirements
OS Version
Solaris 8 with relevant Java 2 patches for JDK 1.3.1_02
For patches, check the http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/install-solaris-patches.html site.
CPU
Ultra 10 or faster
RAM
256 MB (required)
Hard disk storage space requirements
Total required is approximately 400 MB, as follows: 
  • Total transient space required during installation: 100 MB
  • Hard disk storage space required for installation:
    • Space required for setup, configuration, and running the server: approximately 250 MB
    • Additional space to allow for database growth in pilot deployment: approximately 50 MB
    • Total disk storage space for installation: approximately 300 MB
Other Requirements
You must install as root in order to use well-known port numbers (such as 443) that are less than 1024. If you do not plan to use port numbers less than 1024, you do not need to install as root. If you plan to run as root , you should also install as root and specify nobody as the default run-as user and group.

Other Required Software


CMS Documentation

For the latest information about Certificate Management System, including current release notes, technical notes, and deployment information, always check this site:
http://enterprise.netscape.com/docs/cms/index.html

The complete set of CMS documentation for this release includes the following: If you obtained product on a CD, you can find the documentation in the directory named Docs at the top level of the CD. For a list of documentation, open the index.html file.

If you are working with files you have downloaded from the web site, as opposed to the files on the CD, the Docs directory mentioned above will not be present. Instead, you must use either of these options:


Installation Procedure


Important Notes and Known Problems

This section lists important notes, bugs, and known issues, and provides workarounds for some of the problems that you may encounter with the product. (The problems are identified by bug numbers to help you refer to them if you need to contact technical support.)


Agent and End-Entity Interface

Authentication/Enrollment

CA Cloning

A new parameter defined in the CMS configuration file enables you to connect  two certificate repositories by manually editing the value assigned to the parameter. To join two certificate repositories:
You now have two cloned CAs, each with its own request queue, but sharing a common certificate repository.

Certificate Revocation List (CRL)

CMS Console

Command-Line Tools


                                                                   
      

Documentation

Installation

Renewal of Certificates

Revocation of Certificates

Policy

Publishing of Certificates


For More Information

Your feedback is welcome and extremely helpful for improving the product. Before contacting us to request assistance, please check the documentation for this release. If you need further assistance or information about Certificate Management System or if you need to report problems with this product, contact technical support. You may also contact us through our newsgroup for support, questions, answers, and the latest information:
snews://secnews.netscape.com/netscape.dev.certificate
You might also find it useful to subscribe to the following newsgroups, where topics related to security, certificate, and directory are discussed:
snews://secnews.netscape.com/netscape.dev.ssl
snews://secnews.netscape.com/netscape.dev.security
snews://secnews.netscape.com/netscape.dev.directory
So that we can best assist you in resolving problems, please be sure to include the following information: For problems involving the use of directory with other products, include the product name (for example, Netscape 6.2), the release number, and platform information for those products as well.


Use of this product is subject to the License accompanying the product.
Copyright © 2001 Sun Microsystems, Inc. Portions copyright 1999, 2002 Netscape Communications Corporation. All rights reserved.