HP Systems Insight Manager 5.3 Technical Reference Guide

• Invalid Certificate Format appears in the debug log files followed by the
system this error message corresponds to.
The certificate was being sent from a program residing on a port that one of the HP SIM HP Insight
Management Agent should reside on. Another possible cause of this error is that the certificate sent to
the CMS was corrupt.
To correct this issue, verify that the Insight Management Agent running on the client system has not
been tampered with and is running as expected. Verify that no other programs on the client are using
the ports used by HP SIM. If this error continues, contact HP technical support. For information about
the ports that are used by HP SIM and its partner applications, see the Understanding HP SIM 5.3
security white paper at http://h18013.www1.hp.com/products/servers/management/hpsim/
infolibrary.html.
• Certificate has expired followed by the system name.
The expiration date of the certificate is past the current date.
To correct this issue, verify the certificate expiration date. If the expiration date is past the current date,
then a new certificate must be generated for this system. Otherwise, check the system date and time
on the CMS. If the CMS is out of date, then correct the date and time and try importing the certificate
again. See “Creating a server certificate” for information about generating a new certificate. See
“Importing a server certificate” for information about importing the certificate.
Related topics
• Networking and security
• Server certificates
• Trusted certificates
Trusted certificates
Trusted certificates provide the highest level of security. Users with administrative rights can import certificates
from other systems into the HP SIM Trusted System Certificates List.
The purpose of the Trusted System Certificates List in HP SIM is to maintain a list of certificates in the HP SIM
keystore . Certificates include the HP SIM system certificate and the certificates of managed systems that are
trusted by the HP SIM system. These imported certificates are placed in the keystore and appear in the Trusted
System Certificates List.
The Trusted System Certificate List page includes the following options:
• Always Accept If Always Accept is selected, SSL always accepts the certificate presented by a system
in the SSL connection. This setting is the default and is vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks, but it is
the easiest option to use.
• Require If Require is selected, you must set up the trust by manually installing the system’s certificate
into the HP SIM Trusted System Certificate List. This option is the most secure, but it is the most difficult
to implement.
HP SIM provides the following trusted certificate options:
• Import trusted certificate. Select Options→Security→Credentials→Trusted Systems, and then
click Import.
• Export certificate Select Options→Security→Credentials→Trusted Systems, and then click
Export.
• Delete trusted certificate Select Options→Security→Credentials→Trusted Systems, select the
certificates to be deleted, and then click Delete.
Related procedures
• Importing trusted certificates
• Exporting trusted certificates
• Deleting trusted certificates
180 Networking and security