Troubleshooting

February 25th, 2026

Troubleshooting failures is best achieved at either the command level or certificate level depending on the type of failure.

Command Failures

If an AC X509 Authority command fails, more information may be retrieved by retrying the command with the --verbose option set. This will give more output directly back to the console.

For example:

# ac_x509_authority MyCA create someCertificate.com --verbose

The verbose option always goes at the end of the command.

Additional debugging information can also be found in the datastore location debug log located at /var/CA/debug.log by default.

Each command has its own PID so it is easy to follow all messages related to a single execution.

Certificate Failures

A certificate failure is when AC X509 Authority creates a key-pair without error but some end entity application fails to accept the certificate for use. In these situations, it may be necessary to query the contents of the private key or public certificate directly to see their raw configuration.

Viewing a Key

$ openssl rsa -in <path_to_key_file> -text

Viewing a Certificate

$ openssl x509 -in <path_to_certificate_file> -text