docs/linux_cert_management.md

# Linux Cert Management

**NOTE:** SSL client authentication with personal certificates does not work
completely in Linux, see [issue 16830](https://crbug.com/16830) and
[issue 25241](https://crbug.com/25241).

The easy way to manage certificates is navigate to chrome://settings/search#ssl.
Then click on the "Manage Certificates" button. This will load a built-in
interface for managing certificates.

On Linux, Chromium uses the
[NSS Shared DB](https://wiki.mozilla.org/NSS_Shared_DB_And_LINUX). If the
built-in manager does not work for you then you can configure certificates with
the
[NSS command line tools](http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/pki/nss/tools/).

## Details

### Get the tools

*   Debian/Ubuntu: `sudo apt-get install libnss3-tools`
*   Fedora: `su -c "yum install nss-tools"`
*   Gentoo: `su -c  "echo 'dev-libs/nss utils' >> /etc/portage/package.use &&
    emerge dev-libs/nss"` (You need to launch all commands below with the `nss`
    prefix, e.g., `nsscertutil`.)
*   Opensuse: `sudo zypper install mozilla-nss-tools`

### List all certificates

    certutil -d sql:$HOME/.pki/nssdb -L

#### Ubuntu Jaunty error

Above (and most commands) gives:

    certutil: function failed: security library: invalid arguments.

Package version 3.12.3.1-0ubuntu0.9.04.2

### List details of a certificate

    certutil -d sql:$HOME/.pki/nssdb -L -n <certificate nickname>

### Add a certificate

```shell
certutil -d sql:$HOME/.pki/nssdb -A -t <TRUSTARGS> -n <certificate nickname> \
-i <certificate filename>
```

The TRUSTARGS are three strings of zero or more alphabetic characters, separated
by commas. They define how the certificate should be trusted for SSL, email, and
object signing, and are explained in the
[certutil docs](http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/pki/nss/tools/certutil.html#1034193)
or
[Meena's blog post on trust flags](https://blogs.oracle.com/meena/entry/notes_about_trust_flags).

For example, to trust a root CA certificate for issuing SSL server certificates,
use

```shell
certutil -d sql:$HOME/.pki/nssdb -A -t "C,," -n <certificate nickname> \
-i <certificate filename>
```

To import an intermediate CA certificate, use

```shell
certutil -d sql:$HOME/.pki/nssdb -A -t ",," -n <certificate nickname> \
-i <certificate filename>
```

Note: to trust a self-signed server certificate, we should use

```
certutil -d sql:$HOME/.pki/nssdb -A -t "P,," -n <certificate nickname> \
-i <certificate filename>
```

This should work now, because
[NSS bug 531160](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=531160) is claimed
to be fixed in a related bug report.  If it doesn't work, then to work around
the NSS bug, you have to trust it as a CA using the "C,," trust flags.

#### Add a personal certificate and private key for SSL client authentication

Use the command:

    pk12util -d sql:$HOME/.pki/nssdb -i PKCS12_file.p12

to import a personal certificate and private key stored in a PKCS #12 file. The
TRUSTARGS of the personal certificate will be set to "u,u,u".

### Delete a certificate

    certutil -d sql:$HOME/.pki/nssdb -D -n <certificate nickname>