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Globus Certificate Service

The Globus Certificate Service is a service that issues low-quality certificates to users who require certificates to use the Globus Toolkit® and do not have other means of acquiring certificates. The Globus Certificate Service is not a true CA (for example, it does not revoke or reissue certificates) and certificates from the Globus Certificate Service are intended solely for experimentation and testing. Care should be taken when using certificates issued by it, particularly on production resources.

We strongly encourage users to use more secure alternatives to the Globus Certificate Service, including:

  • The best option for users that are a member of one of the many production Grids that has established it's own high-quality CAs, is to use that CA.
  • Establishing their own CA using Simple CA. The Simple CA package provides a convenient method of setting up a certificate authority (CA) that is interoperable with the Globus Toolkit. It is intended for users of small, test grid environments, or users that are not part of a larger grid.

For those using the Globus Certificate Service, they should be aware that it delivers the following:

  • User certificates with meaningless but unique names. This allows these certificates to uniquely identify users in a fairly secure manner.
  • Host and services certificates as requested with no implied vetting or uniqueness. Since we cannout verify who is authorized to request certificates for all the hosts in our broad user community, these certificates are of no security value and exist solely to allow the Globus Toolkit to function without a real CA being available.

Available Services

Before using these services you must install the Globus Certificate Service setup package and read the disclaimer below.

Debugging help for GCS is available below.

DISCLAIMER

Globus Certificate Service is provided to you without charge as a convenience only.  The Globus Project disclaims any liability that may arise from use of any certificate issued by the Globus Certificate Service.  By merely enabling use of the Globus Certificate Service we do not assume any liability for accuracy, authenticity, reliability, completeness, currentness, merchantability, or fitness of any information contained in or certified by certificates or otherwise compiled, published, or disseminated under a certificate.  In other words, you use the Globus Certificate Service at your own risk. Under no circumstances, including, but not limited to, negligence, shall the Globus be liable for any direct or indirect, special, incidental, consequential or punitive damages, arising out of or relating to any certificate issued under the Globus Certificate Service.  This includes loss of data or profit arising out of the use or the inability to use the Globus Certificate Service, even if one of our representatives has been advised of the possibility of your damages. If your use of the Globus Certificate Service results in your need to service, repair or correct equipment or data, you assume the costs to the extent the law allows. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of liability for consequential or incidental damages. In such jurisdictions, our liability is limited to the greatest extent permitted by law.
 

Debugging Help

A number of suggestions for debugging GCS are listed below. If you don't find help for your problem here, please check: Finally, you can post a question to discuss@globus.org describing your problem. You will need to subscribe first (sorry, SPAM prevention).

How do I know I have my user certificate installed correctly?

The command grid-proxy-init -verify -debug should run successfully. If it fails, its output should help by comparing the message it returns to messages below.

I get the following error: Could not verify credential: unable to get issuer certificate

This means that you do not have support for GCS installed on your local host. Please see the GCS setup directions.

Globus Project and Globus Toolkit are trademarks
held by the University of Chicago.

 

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Last modified 08/15/03. Comments? webmaster@globus.org

Globus Project and Globus Toolkit are trademarks
held by the University of Chicago.