GT 3.93 Pre-WS Authentication & Authorization : System Administrator's Guide

Introduction

Authentication in the Globus Toolkit is based on X.509 certificates. This document describes the configuration steps required to:
  • Determine whether or not to trust certificates issued by a particular Certificate Authority (CA),
  • Provide appropriate default values for use by the grid-cert-request command, which is used to generate certificates,
  • Request service certificates, used by services to authenticate themselves to users, and
  • Specify identity mapping information.

Building and Installing

The security tools are installed as part of the Globus Toolkit installation process. For instructions on basic installation of the Globus Toolkit, see the Installation Guide.

Configuring

Information on configuration settings and environment variables can be found in the public interface guide.

Deploying

This section is not applicable.

Testing

[procedures for how to test the configuration. must include examples of the tests ]

Troubleshooting

The following are some common problems that may cause clients or servers to report that credentials are invalid:

Your proxy credential may have expired

Use grid-proxy-info to check whether the proxy has actually expired. If it has, generate a new proxy with grid-proxy-init.

The system clock on either the local or remote system is wrong

This may cause the server or client to conclude that a credential has expired.

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.

The permissions may be wrong on your proxy file

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.

The permissions may be wrong on your private key file

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.

The remote system may not trust your CA

Verify that the remote system is configured to trust the CA that issued your end-entity certificate. See the [TODO: add admin guide link] for details.

You may not trust the remote system's CA

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 [TODO: add admin guide link] for details.

There may be something wrong with the remote service's credentials

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.

The following are some common problems that may cause clients or servers to report that user are not authorized:

The content of the gridmap file does not conform to the expected format

Use grid-mapfile-check-consistency to make sure that your gridmap conforms to the expected format.

The gridmap file does not contain a entry for your DN

Use grid-mapfile-add-entry to add the relevant entry.