I hadn't come across a hashed directory before and, having read the relevant
sections in the OpenSSL documentation (openssl -verify and x509 -hash), I
must admit it still doesn't make an awful lot of sense to me. I am working
on Windows so perhaps that is the cause of the problem (amongst many
others!) but can anyone enlighten me as to what is a hashed directory and
how to provide a hashed directory on Windows.

On a Unix system the usual practice is to make a symbolic link whose name is the hash value of the certificate Subject and that points to the actual certificate. Like this:

# ls -l
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root httpd   14 Mar 24 09:51 a0199d1b.0 -> inter.cert.pem
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root httpd   14 Mar 24 09:51 bc3a0aa7.0 -> ssign.cert.pem
-r--r----- 1 root httpd 1732 Mar 24 09:45 inter.cert.pem
-r--r----- 1 root httpd 1720 Mar 17 15:43 root.cert.pem
-r--r----- 1 root httpd 1789 Mar 24 09:45 ssign.cert.pem

That way, when constructing a certificate chain, the software can
compute the hash of the Issuer of the lower certificate and then
find the upper certificate by searching for that hash, as a file name.

If Windows doesn't have links, I don't see any reason why you could
not either duplicate the file or just rename the file as the hash
(though you would lose readability).

The hash value can be computed by

% openssl x509 -noout -hash -in inter.cert.pem
a0199d1b


See also:


http://cert.umd.edu/spickdoc?apache

http://www.ssl.com/support/installation.jsp - (note right column links)
http://www.apache.org
http://www.openssl.org

--
Charles B (Ben) Cranston
mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.wam.umd.edu/~zben

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