Image:SSL Certificate installation errors - copy the key from the email source

I have been pulling my hair out trying to get a Globalsign  / 123reg SSL certificate installed on a Domino server. It’s something I have done a few times but this time I was stumped.

What was different was that this SSL provider emails the certificates as plain text which you can then paste into the dialog in the Server Certificate Admin application. In the past I have always either downloaded certificate files or copied the text from a web portal.

I realised what was going wrong when I could install the intermediate certificate from the vendors site but not using the text string sent to me. I then compared the text and apart from some line breaks the strings were the same. When I created a .crt file the Windows 7 OS could open the certificate and browse it happily whereas Notes baulked.

Eventually I opened the email and viewed the string in the email source ( View > Show > Page Source ) and copied the text string from there. This then worked fine – only 3 hours of my life wasted.

The error message was

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Error
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Error decoding certificate
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OK  
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Hopefully this will come up in Google when you need it.