I found the problem I was having trying to use NSS on windows 98.  I was
using the Netscape 6.2 certificate, key and secmod databases.  As is turns
out, no NSS based application can access these databases; if they try, the
program aborts on the NSS_Init call.

If you use the NSS utilities modutil and certutil to create new databases,
define various PKCS11 smart card/USB tokens PKCS11 dll's and add a few
certificates to the internal module, then all the utilities will work,
including my program.

If  you copy these databases to the Netscape user profile and start Netscape
6.2, use PSM to list the certificates, all works well.  Then if you close
Netscape and then copy the databases back to the test directory, all NSS
based programs that try to access the databases will abort.

I guess this means trying to use NSS on a windows based system is not such a
good idea unless you have no plans to ever use Netscape to use the
certificates/keys contained within the certificate database used by all
other applications, or to never use the certificates contained within the
Netscape databases in all the other applications.  Might as well use the
Microsoft browser/cryptoapi, where all security aware programs can share the
common certificates.

Ken






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