Fix clone*.privkey.id_entries in CS.cfg to reenable cloning.

If your cloning of a CA fails at generating the SSL certificate with (in logs/debug):

CertUtil::createSelfSignedCert() - CA private key is null!

it is probable that the private key id in your masters CS.cfg got mixed up.

For example in my case

# grep privkey.id conf/CS.cfg
cloning.signing.privkey.id     =-4d798441aa7230910d4e1c39fa132ea228d5d1bc
cloning.ocsp_signing.privkey.id =-3e23e743e0ddd88f2a7c6f69fa9f9bcebef1a60
cloning.subsystem.privkey.id     =-c3c1b3b4e8f5dd6d2bdefd07581c0b15529536
cloning.sslserver.privkey.id    =3023d30245804a4fab42be209ebb0dc683423a8f
cloning.audit_signing.privkey.id=2fe35d9d46b373efabe9ef01b8436667a70df096

did not fit to the keys in the certificate store (this will happen if you replace the CA key or do a rekeying of one of the other keys):

# certutil -K -d alias
certutil: Checking token "NSS Certificate DB" in slot "NSS User Private Key and Certificate Services"
Enter Password or Pin for "NSS Certificate DB":
< 0> rsa      a7b0944b7b8397729a4c8c9af3a9c2b96f49c6f3   caSigningCert cert-ca4-test-master
< 1> rsa      6006094af3e5d02aaa91426594ca66cb53e73ac0   ocspSigningCert cert-ca4-test-master
< 2> rsa      d684da39bf4f2789a3fc9d42204596f4578ad2d9   subsystemCert cert-ca4-test-master
< 3> rsa      a8edd7c2b5c94f13144cacd99624578ae30b7e43   sslserverCert cert-ca4-test1
< 4> rsa      2fe35d9d46b373efabe9ef01b8436667a70df096   auditSigningCert cert-ca4-test1

as you can see, only the privkey entry for the audit_signing key does fit.

My first try to fix this by simply editing the values fom certutil into the CS.cfg failed, because dogtags code uses those numbers internaly as java BigIntegers – and those are signed values, not unsigned as certutils output (some debugging was involved here).

So you need a calulator with big integers capability (if nothing else, wolfram alpha comes to help) to calculate the signed values to certutil’s unsigned values. This gives

]# grep privkey.id CS.cfg
cloning.signing.privkey.id     =-584f6bb4847c688d65b373650c563d4690b6390d
cloning.ocsp_signing.privkey.id =6006094af3e5d02aaa91426594ca66cb53e73ac0
cloning.subsystem.privkey.id   =-297b25c640b0d8765c0362bddfba690ba8752d27
cloning.sslserver.privkey.id   =-5712283d4a36b0ecebb3532669dba8751cf481bd
cloning.audit_signing.privkey.id=2fe35d9d46b373efabe9ef01b8436667a70df096

With those changes cloning completed successfully.

As a follow-up to this. You can use the following simple program to convert the output of certutil to the format needed in CS.cfg

import java.math.BigInteger;

public class Test
{

  public static byte[] hexStringToByteArray(String s) {
      int len = s.length();
      byte[] data = new byte[len / 2];
      for (int i = 0; i < len; i += 2) {
          data[i / 2] = (byte) ((Character.digit(s.charAt(i), 16) << 4)
                               + Character.digit(s.charAt(i+1), 16));
      }
      return data;
  }

  public static void main(String[] args)
  {
      byte[] bytes = hexStringToByteArray(args[0]);
      BigInteger big = new BigInteger (bytes);
      System.out.println("Result is  ==> " + big.toString(16));
  }
}

Call the file Test.java, and compile as – javac Test.java