25

when I'm using certutil it returns this error: certutil: function failed: security library: bad database.

e.g. I can't list certs or keys

How Can I fix this?

6 Answers 6

36

If it is new system, your certificate database might not be initialized. To fix this, perform:

mkdir -p $HOME/.pki/nssdb
certutil -d $HOME/.pki/nssdb -N
2
  • 3
    If you don't want a password on the certificate database, add the --empty-password switch to the end of the certutil command. May 31, 2018 at 15:32
  • I found that if I ran instead: certutil -d sql:$HOME/.pki/nssdb -L it would not result in that error. But if I just run certutil -L it would show that error. Does that mean the database is not corrupted, but there's some incompatibilty or does certutil expect the wrong directory? Jan 15, 2020 at 5:17
8

In case database already has been initialised, but still is corrupted then it has to be rebuild:

$ mv ~/.pki/nssdb ~/.pki/nssdb.corrupted
$ mkdir ~/.pki/nssdb
$ chmod 700 ~/.pki/nssdb
$ certutil -d sql:$HOME/.pki/nssdb -N

Check if working alright

$ certutil -d sql:$HOME/.pki/nssdb -L
Certificate Nickname                                         Trust Attributes
                                                             SSL,S/MIME,JAR/XPI

Import certificate

$ certutil -d sql:$HOME/.pki/nssdb -A -t "C,," -n GoAgent -i ~/programs/goagent/local/CA.crt
3
  • Since last update of libGNUTLS on Debian my browsers (chrome and iceweasel) failed to open. On console I got [5284:5310:0306/110217:ERROR:nss_util.cc(750)] After loading Root Certs, loaded==false: NSS error code: -8018 and no way to solve this gracefully. Rebuilding the DB solved it for me! Thank you very much :)
    – pid
    Mar 6, 2014 at 11:18
  • I was able to rebuild the DB and list the certificates after that, but my import is still failing with the error: certutil: function failed: SEC_ERROR_BAD_DATABASE: security library: bad database. My import command is certutil -d sql:$HOME/.pki/nssb -A -t "CT,C,C" -n sophos -i ~/Downloads/sophos_cert.crt This shouldn't have to be run as root, should it?
    – Gillfish
    Jul 29, 2015 at 15:54
  • This fixed an nss_util.cc error: After loading Root Certs, loaded==false: NSS error code: -8018 when starting Google Chrome on an existing user profile that was possibly corrupted.
    – mchid
    Sep 19, 2023 at 10:45
2

If you want to display certifications from a specific folder (for example, the folder which stores the cert8.db file for Firefox), you need to specify the folder with "-d":

nss-certutil -d /Users/myuser/Library/Application\ Support/Firefox/Profiles/jii912uh.default -L

Otherwise, nss-certutil may try to read *.db files from ~/.netscape folder, or maybe $HOME/.pki/nssdb as previous user mentioned.

1

Also check the -d directory path (must point to the directory) have any space or not. With space it gives the same error or bad file format error - old database format etc. Specially in Mac the folder is in "Application Support" which contains space. So have the path fully quoted:

"/Users/myuser/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/jii912uh.default"

or add the \ escape character.

 /Users/myuser/Library/Application\ Support/Firefox/Profiles/jii912uh.default

And check that the folder have the following files, cert8.db, key3.db and secmob.db.

1

Quite an old question, but the mentioned solutions did not work for me, because the error was caused by incorrect shell expansion.

In my case, I had to replace ~ with $HOME, e.g.

certutil -d sql:~/.pki/nssdb -A -t "C,," -n KEY_NAME -i ~/path_to_the_key/key.cert

became

certutil -d sql:$HOME/.pki/nssdb -A -t "C,," -n KEY_NAME -i $HOME/path_to_the_key/key.cert
0

In my case I solved problem using this solution (Windows XP, nss 3.15.1):

cd /dir/with/database
C:/full/path/to/certutil.exe -L -d .
1
  • 2
    That's great, but the question specifies CentOS.
    – MadHatter
    Sep 3, 2013 at 13:07

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