GCT 6.2 Installation Appendix

The Grid Community Toolkit is available for download from github. See https://github.com/gridcf/gct to branch or checkout the toolkit source code.

After checking out the toolkit, run autoreconf -i in the checkout root to generate configure scripts for building the toolkit components.

If you need to build a specific package from the source installer, you can use the per-package make targets that exist in the source installer’s Makefile. Instead of simply running "make" in the steps above, you can, for example, run "make globus_common" which will build the globus_common package and its dependencies, or "make globus_common-only" which will build exactly and only the globus_common package. Similar targets exist for each package.

The following is a list of links to more detailed installation information available for the following components:

If you need to build an updated package that has been released without a source installer (for example, a security update to a package, or a new version of MyProxy,) you can use the familiar configure; make; make install sequence to rebuild that package.

The vast majority of the environment variables that affect the Globus XIO framework are defined by the driver in use. The following are links to descriptions of the more common driver environment variables:

Please refer to the MyProxy Reference Manual for documentation of MyProxy environment variable interfaces.

The GSI-enabled OpenSSHD needs to be able to find certain files and directories in order to properly function.

The items that OpenSSHD needs to be able to locate, their default location and the environment variable to override the default location are:

The GridFTP server or client libraries do not read any environment variable directly, but the security and networking related variables described below may be useful.

Make sure you have the following users on your machine:

SimpleCA can be installed in three ways, from a debian package, from an RPM package, and from the source installer. These installation methods are described in Installing GCT 6.2.

To install SimpleCA from binary packages, install the packages globus-simple-ca and globus-gsi-cert-utils-progs and their dependencies. On Debian based systems, use the command

On RPM-based systems, use the command

To install SimpleCA from the source installer, build the globus_simple_ca and globus_gsi_cert_utils installer targets with the command

Afterward, run the command

Create a user to adminster the SimpleCA. You can use the the globus user you used to build GCT, or another user that you create. For the purposes of this document, we’ll assume a user named simpleca. Log in to that user, and run the grid-ca-create command. This will prompt for information needed to name the certificate, how to contact the CA administrator, lifetime of the CA certificate, and passphrase, and will then generate the new CA certificate and private key. Command-line options described in grid-ca-create can be used to avoid some of these prompts.

If you are creating a SimpleCA for testing purposes, you can use the -noint command-line option to grid-ca-create to use the default values for all prompts like this:

This will create a SimpleCA in the simpleca's home directory with the passphrase globus. You can then move on to the Using a SimpleCA chapter of this document. For step-by-step details to create a customized SimpleCA, continue reading this chapter.

As the simpleca user, run the command grid-ca-create, and you’ll see output like this:

This intro screen shows the path that the CA will be created into (in this example, /home/simpleca/.globus/simpleCA). The other commands needed by SimpleCA will automatically look in that path by default when invoked by the ). The other commands needed by SimpleCA will automatically look in that path by default when invoked by the simpleca user.

The grid-ca-create program next prompts you for information about the name of CA you wish to create:

To accept the default name, enter y. To choose a different name, type n, after which you will be prompted by

The subject name is an X.509 distinguished name. Typical name component type abbreviations used in Grids are:

The next prompt looks like this:

Enter the email address where you intend to receive certificate requests. It should be your real email address that you check, not the address of the globus user. When users request certificates with grid-cert-request, they will be instructed to send the request to this address.

Then you’ll see:

This is the number of days for which the CA certificate is valid. Once this time expires, the CA certificate will have to be recreated.

To accept the default, hit enter, or otherwise, enter a value in days.

The next prompt will be for the passphrase for the CA’s private key. It will be used to decrypt the CA’s private key when signing certificates. It should be hard to guess, as its compromise might compromise all the certificates signed by the CA. You will be prompted twice for the passphrase, to verify that you typed it correctly. Enter the passphrase at these prompts.

Finally grid-ca-create will create a tarball containing the public information about the CA, including its public certificate, signing policy, and supported X.509v3 extensions. This information is needed on machines that will be trusting the CA, and also on machines which will be used to request certificates from this CA.

Since we didn’t run in this example as root, grid-ca-create will not be able to write the CA files to system paths, so it displays a warning message indicating that. We can use the tarball output here, or packages described below to install the CA support files on this and other machines.

The package output summary looks like this:

This information will be important for setting up other machines in your grid. The number 68ea3306 in the last line is known as your CA hash. It is an 8 digit hexadecimal string which is a hash of the subject name of the CA certificate.

The tarball contains Debian and RPM package metadata, so that it can be compiled to a binary package which can be easily installed on this and other systems on your Grid. It can also be packaged as a GPT setup package for compatibility with older versions of the Globus Toolkit.

The grid-ca-package command can be used to generate RPM, debian, or legacy GPT packages for a SimpleCA, or for any other CA which is installed on a host. These packages can make it easy to distribute the CA certificate and policy to other hosts with which you want to establish Grid trust relationships.

To examine a certificate request, use the command openssl req -text -in , as shown in the following example.

If you are satisfied with the certificate request and are willing to sign it, use the grid-ca-sign command to do so. The command will store a copy of the newly signed certificate in the SimpleCA directory, so that you can keep track of what you’ve signed, and will also write it to the value of the -out parameter. Transmit this result file back to the user which requested the certificate.

Once you’ve signed the certificate, if it is a user certificate, you must communicate it back to the user, perhaps via email.

SimpleCA does not yet provide a convenient interface to revoke a signed certificate, but it can be done with the openssl command.

Once a certificate is revoked, you can generate a Certificate Revocation List (CRL) for your CA, which will be a signed list of certificates which have been revoked. Sites which use your CA will need to keep the CRL up to date to be able to reject revoked certificates. This CRL can be generated with an openssl command. See ca(1) for details about how to control the CRL lifetime and other options.

The output file CAHASH.crl (based on the hash of your CA subject name) should be distributed to sites which trust your CA, so that they can install it into the trusted certificate directory.

The openssl command can be used to renew a CA certificate. This will generate a new CA certificate with the same subject name and private key as before, but valid for a different time interval. This new certificate packaged and distributed as before using grid-ca-package.

The operator of a CA must protect the private key of the CA. It should not be stored unencrypted or on a network filesystem.

Simple CA enforces the subject name policies in the simple CA’s configuration files. If modified, the signing_policy file distributed to clients of the CA must also be modified.

Globus XIO is a framework for creating network protocols. Several existing protocols, such as TCP, come built into the framework. XIO itself introduces no known security risks. However, all network applications expose systems to the risks inherent when outsiders can connect to them. Also included in the XIO distribution is the GSI driver, which provides a driver that allows for secure connections.

During host authorization, the toolkit treats host names of the form hostname-ANYTHING.edu as equivalent to hostname.edu. This means that if a service was set up to do host authorization and hence accept the certificate hostname.edu, it would also accept certificates with DNs hostname-ANYTHING.edu.

The feature is in place to allow a multi-homed host following a "hostname-interface" naming convention, to have a single host certificate. For example, host grid.test.edu would also accept the likes of grid-1.test.edu or grid-foo.test.edu.

In GCT 6.2, it is possible to disable this behavior, by setting the enviornment variable GLOBUS_GSSAPI_NAME_COMPATIBILITY to STRICT_RFC2818.

You should choose a well-protected host to run the myproxy-server on. Consult with security-aware personnel at your site. You want a host that is secured to the level of a Kerberos KDC, that has limited user access, runs limited services, and is well monitored and maintained in terms of security patches.

For a typical myproxy-server installation, the host on which the myproxy-server is running must have /etc/grid-security created and a host certificate installed. In this case, the myproxy-server will run as root so it can access the host certificate and key.

GSI-OpenSSH is a modified version of OpenSSH and includes full OpenSSH functionality. For more information on OpenSSH security, see the OpenSSH Security page.