Netscape NETSCAPE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM 4.5, Installation And Setup Manual

Page: 504 / 866

Managing the Certificate Database
504 Netscape Certificate Management System Installation and Setup Guide • October 2001
The window lists the certificates in a table, with each certificate occupying a
row. The certificates are listed in alphabetical order. If the database contains
multiple certificates with the same nickname, they are sorted by their validity
periods; the most recently requested certificate is placed at the top.
For each certificate, you see the following information:
Certificate Name. Specifies the nickname of the certificate.
Expiry Date.
Specifies the date (and time) on which the certificate expires.
Trust Status. Specifies whether the CA is trusted or untrusted. To change the
trust setting, see “Changing the Trust Settings of a CA Certificate” on page 505.
Deleting a Certificate From the Certificate
Database
By default, the CMS certificate database includes a few public or third-party CA
certificates. As an administrator, you should periodically check the contents of the
certificate database and make sure that it doesn’t include any unwanted CA
certificates. For example, if the database includes CA certificates that you don’t
ever want to trust in your PKI setup, you should delete them.
Removing unwanted certificates also reduces the size of the certificate database.
To delete a CA certificate from the certificate database:
1.
Log in to the CMS window (see “Logging In to the CMS Window” on
page 343).
2.
Select the Configuration tab, and then in the right pane, select the Encryption
tab.
NOTE
When deleting CA certificates from the certificate database, be
careful not to delete the intermediate CA certificates, which help a
subsystem chain up to the trusted CA certificate. If in doubt, leave
the certificates in the database as untrusted CA certificates; see
“Changing the Trust Settings of a CA Certificate” on page 505.