OK, answered my own question. (Needed to install two certificates, a mine.p12 file and a theirs.pem file, to login to a Web-enabled database. The db owner does not support anything except Internet Explorer. I couldn't get Galeon, Mozilla or Netscape Communicator to import the theirs.pem file; each program wanted a password, but there is none.)
Turns out I needn't have bothered trying to import the theirs.pem file. Galeon merely gave me a stern warning when I logged into the site that it couldn't be held responsible for the authenticity of the site's certificate and was I sure I wanted to accept it? Once I accepted it the login proceeded without incident. And Galeon has now stored the site's certificate. So - either IE is an outlier in the way it handles certificates, or the site owner's instructions to IE users are needlessly involved. =====Andrew On Mon, 2003-08-04 at 23:38, Andrew Packer wrote: > Curly question about digital certificates. > > For a new job I'm going to have to be logging into a Web-enabled > database. I've been issued with two digital certificates to install. > One is from the database owner and appears to be a text (albeit > nonsensical text) file with the suffix .pem The other is my personal > certificate and carries the suffix .p12 The database owner is a > Windows shop and gives instructions for importing the certificates into > Internet Explorer only. They suggest that Mozilla should work but will > not offer support for it. I'm of course anxious to use Mozilla or > preferably Galeon (which is my browser of choice). I'm not worried > about support if I can get started. > > The difficulty I'm encountering is that IE 6.0 imports the .pem file > without demanding a password (as none has been supplied), but Galeon, > Mozilla and Netscape Communicator (each running in my RH 7.3 partition) > each demand a password for the .pem file. As I can't supply one, the > installation fails. (The .p12 file, for which I have got the password, > is not a problem. The .pem file does not install with the .p12 file's > password.) > > It doesn't seem logical that digital certificates should be handled > differently in Windows and in Linux, rather it strikes me that IE is > doing something the other programs are not doing (or more likely, > failing to do something the other programs are doing). Can anyone offer > any guidance in this situation? > > =====Andrew
