Meru Technical Note - How to restore Certificates from an RMA Controller to a new (replacement) Controller?

[nsamuel]

Description

How to restore Certificates from an RMA Controller to a new (replacement) Controller?

Scope
KB ARTICLE TYPE: Configuration
RELATED PRODUCTS: Meru Controllers
KEYWORDS: Restore, Certificates, RMA, Replacement X.509
Solution

Restoring Certificates from an RMA’ed controller. 

Export does not work while restoring the certificates to a new controller; this is due to the fact that keys cannot be exported. The only way around this is to copy the files associated with certificates from the RMA’ed controller to the new production controller via root access. 


Run the following commands:

1.    cd to the following directory on the RMA’ed controller
a.    /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf –this file contains the httpd configuration parameters which includes the certificates parameters.

2.    copy the above from the RMA’ed controller

3.    [make a back up copy of the httpd.conf file on the new controller just to be safe. 
a.    cp /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf  /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf-bk

4.    now copy the httpd.conf file from the old (RMA’ed) controller to the new controller “/etc/httpd/conf/”]

5.    From the old controller go to the following directory
a.    opt/meru/cert

6.    In this directory on the old controller tar the entire cert directory. The tar command has to be issued within the cert directory. 
a.    bash-2.05a# ls
       ca  csr  internal  key  p12  pswd  server  userapps
       bash-2.05a# tar -cvf cert.tar .  ?  (Note: Don’t forget the period!)

----verify the tar file ----

       bash-2.05a# ls -l
       -rw-r--r--    1 root     root        30720 Jan  2 23:28 cert.tar

7.    Now tftp or ftp the tar file from the old controller to the new production controller

8.    It is always a good Idea to create a backup tar file on the new controller before you untar the tar file from the old controller back up the cert directory on the new production controller. 

        bash-2.05a# tar -cvf cert.tar-bk . <-- don’t forget that pesky period

After this is complete issue the command below to extract the imported cert dir:

         tar –xvf <filename.tar>


9.    Restart apache from the cli from the GUI cli in the upper right hand corner
of the GUI under cli, or reboot the controller or restart the wncagent (note this is disruptive)