This article is not a full tutorial on setting up SSL on your IBM i. It covers the issue I had after SSL was set up and ODBC still was giving the CWBCO1050 certificate not trusted error.
Installing and using the IBM i Access Client Solutions Java based software (which provides 5250, File Transfer IFS, Run SQL utilities, etc) and the Windows ODBC driver which is installed with the ACS Windows App Pkg English (64bit) is usually a pretty easy process.
There are two separate installers for: IBM i Access Client Solutions and ACS Windows App Pkg English (64bit) available from the following download site if you have an IBM login:
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/ibm-i-access-client-solutions
After installation and configuration you can usually configure a Telnet session with Access Client Solutions or create and use an ODBC data source without issues.
Until you want to use SSL to connect to your database via ODBC instead of unsecured access......
I was trying to set up my IBM i Access ODBC Driver with SSL on a Windows machine and every time I ran cwbping mysysname /ssl:1 to test SSL connectivity for the ODBC driver I got the following error: Error message CWBCO1050 - "The system certificate is not trusted.
My regular IBM i Access services (Java) such as Telnet were working fine with SSL, so I knew the issue had to be with the Windows based ODBC drivers (different technology - C/C++) and its need to use a different certificate store for SSL certs. The certificate store file for IBM i Access Windows package is named: C:\Users\Public\Documents\IBM\Client Access\cwbssldf.kdb and I believe it uses GSKit to encrypt and decrypt certificates.
The CWBCO1050 error usually occurs when you have SSL configured, but have not downloaded the public Certificate Authority certificate or the system Client/Server certificate to the PC key database. Or you have the public Certificate Authority certificate certificate downloaded but it's not marked marked as trusted in the PC key database."
So initially I went through the instructions on the site listed below to make sure my certs were getting downloaded and placed into the IBM i Access Windows package key store file named: C:\Users\Public\Documents\IBM\Client Access\cwbssldf.kdb
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/importing-certificates-use-ibm-i-access-client-solutions-windows-application-package-acs-winap
Downloading and installing the certs to the PC seemed to be working fine.
Then I ran cwbping mysysname /ssl:1 and kept getting: CWBCO1050 - "The system certificate is not trusted.```
Frustrating......
After several hours of playing around with this, in the end it's actually pretty easy if you have the right little bits of information: You need to make sure all the certs you have added to the IBM i Access Windows package key store file named: C:\Users\Public\Documents\IBM\Client Access\cwbssldf.kdb are marked as Trusted.
Let's look at a little example:
First open a DOS terminal window and run the following commands:
Set the path to the gsk8capicmd.exe which is used to list or make changes to the cwbssldf.kdb key store file. This change will only be in place while the DOS Window is open.
set PATH=C:\Program Files (x86)\IBM\gsk8\bin;C:\Program Files (x86)\IBM\gsk8\lib;%PATH%
This command lists all the certs for IBM i Access for Windows key store (different than the Java keystore used by IBM i Access Client Solutions)
gsk8capicmd.exe -cert -list all -db "C:\Users\Public\Documents\IBM\Client Access\cwbssldf.kdb" -pw ca400
Your results may likely look similar to below: All trusted entries are prefixed with an exclamation point !
Also In my scenario Godaddy is the provider for my wildcard domain certificate, but that shouldn't matter.
In this list the bottom 5 entries are marked as untrusted due to the lack of the exclamation point.
So we need to mark those last 5 entries as trusted.
You may have more or less entries marked as untrusted
! "RSA Secure Server Certification Authority"
! "VeriSign Class 3 Secure Server CA"
! "Entrust.net Certification Authority (2048)"
! "Entrust.net Client Certification Authority"
! "Entrust.net Global Client Certification Authority"
! "Entrust.net Global Secure Server Certification Authority"
! "Entrust.net Secure Server Certification Authority"
! "Entrust.net Certification Authority (2048) 29"
! "Entrust Root Certification Authority - EC1"
! "Entrust Root Certification Authority - EV"
! "Entrust Root Certification Authority - G2"
! "Thawte Personal Basic CA"
! "Thawte Personal Freemail CA"
! "Thawte Personal Premium CA"
! "Thawte Premium Server CA"
! "Thawte Server CA"
! "Thawte Primary Root CA - G2 ECC"
! "Thawte Primary Root CA"
! "VeriSign Class 1 Public Primary Certification Authority"
! "VeriSign Class 1 Public Primary Certification Authority - G2"
! "VeriSign Class 1 Public Primary Certification Authority - G3"
! "VeriSign Class 2 Public Primary Certification Authority"
! "VeriSign Class 2 Public Primary Certification Authority - G2"
! "VeriSign Class 2 Public Primary Certification Authority - G3"
! "VeriSign Class 3 Public Primary Certification Authority"
! "VeriSign Class 3 Public Primary Certification Authority - G2"
! "VeriSign Class 3 Public Primary Certification Authority - G3"
! "VeriSign Class 3 Public Primary Certification Authority - G5"
! "VeriSign Class 4 Public Primary Certification Authority - G2"
! "VeriSign Class 4 Public Primary Certification Authority - G3"
"MYSYS.MYDDMAIN.COM - Tuesday, November 21, 2023 13:36:07"
"acs_import_RS_71806731094500 CA - Tuesday, November 21, 2023 15:04:36"
"acs_import_*.mydomain.com_71806234456600 CA - Tuesday, November 21, 2023 15:04:35"
"acs_import_Go Daddy Secure Certificate Authority - G2_71806484262100 CA - Tuesday, November 21, 2023 15:04:35"
"acs_import_Go Daddy Root Certificate Authority - G2_71806571558600 CA - Tuesday, November 21, 2023 15:04:35"
Using our example above, the following 5 commands can be run from the DOS Window to mark our 5 untrusted entries as trusted:
gsk8capicmd.exe -cert -modify -trust enable -label "MYSYS.MYDOMAIN.COM - Tuesday, November 21, 2023 13:36:07" -db "C:\Users\Public\Documents\IBM\Client Access\cwbssldf.kdb" -pw ca400
gsk8capicmd.exe -cert -modify -trust enable -label "acs_import_RS_71806731094500 CA - Tuesday, November 21, 2023 15:04:36" -db "C:\Users\Public\Documents\IBM\Client Access\cwbssldf.kdb" -pw ca400
gsk8capicmd.exe -cert -modify -trust enable -label "acs_import_*.mydomain.com_71806234456600 CA - Tuesday, November 21, 2023 15:04:35" -db "C:\Users\Public\Documents\IBM\Client Access\cwbssldf.kdb" -pw ca400
gsk8capicmd.exe -cert -modify -trust enable -label "acs_import_Go Daddy Secure Certificate Authority - G2_71806484262100 CA - Tuesday, November 21, 2023 15:04:35" -db "C:\Users\Public\Documents\IBM\Client Access\cwbssldf.kdb" -pw ca400
gsk8capicmd.exe -cert -modify -trust enable -label "acs_import_Go Daddy Root Certificate Authority - G2_71806571558600 CA - Tuesday, November 21, 2023 15:04:35" -db "C:\Users\Public\Documents\IBM\Client Access\cwbssldf.kdb" -pw ca400
Now if we repeat the -list command to see if all of our entries are now trusted, we can see they all have exclamation points ! next to them which means all entries are trusted in the key file
This command lists all the certs for IBM i Access for Windows key store (different than the Java keystore used by IBM i Access Client Solutions)
gsk8capicmd.exe -cert -list all -db "C:\Users\Public\Documents\IBM\Client Access\cwbssldf.kdb" -pw ca400
All entries in the cwbssldf.kdb cert file are now trusted.
! "RSA Secure Server Certification Authority"
! "VeriSign Class 3 Secure Server CA"
! "Entrust.net Certification Authority (2048)"
! "Entrust.net Client Certification Authority"
! "Entrust.net Global Client Certification Authority"
! "Entrust.net Global Secure Server Certification Authority"
! "Entrust.net Secure Server Certification Authority"
! "Entrust.net Certification Authority (2048) 29"
! "Entrust Root Certification Authority - EC1"
! "Entrust Root Certification Authority - EV"
! "Entrust Root Certification Authority - G2"
! "Thawte Personal Basic CA"
! "Thawte Personal Freemail CA"
! "Thawte Personal Premium CA"
! "Thawte Premium Server CA"
! "Thawte Server CA"
! "Thawte Primary Root CA - G2 ECC"
! "Thawte Primary Root CA"
! "VeriSign Class 1 Public Primary Certification Authority"
! "VeriSign Class 1 Public Primary Certification Authority - G2"
! "VeriSign Class 1 Public Primary Certification Authority - G3"
! "VeriSign Class 2 Public Primary Certification Authority"
! "VeriSign Class 2 Public Primary Certification Authority - G2"
! "VeriSign Class 2 Public Primary Certification Authority - G3"
! "VeriSign Class 3 Public Primary Certification Authority"
! "VeriSign Class 3 Public Primary Certification Authority - G2"
! "VeriSign Class 3 Public Primary Certification Authority - G3"
! "VeriSign Class 3 Public Primary Certification Authority - G5"
! "VeriSign Class 4 Public Primary Certification Authority - G2"
! "VeriSign Class 4 Public Primary Certification Authority - G3"
! "MYSYS.MYDDMAIN.COM - Tuesday, November 21, 2023 13:36:07"
! "acs_import_RS_71806731094500 CA - Tuesday, November 21, 2023 15:04:36"
! "acs_import_*.mydomain.com_71806234456600 CA - Tuesday, November 21, 2023 15:04:35"
! "acs_import_Go Daddy Secure Certificate Authority - G2_71806484262100 CA - Tuesday, November 21, 2023 15:04:35"
! "acs_import_Go Daddy Root Certificate Authority - G2_71806571558600 CA - Tuesday, November 21, 2023 15:04:35"
Now if you run cwbping mysysname /ssl:1 you should no longer see any errors if your SSL certificates are working as expected with the IBM i Access ODBC Driver.
And you should now be able to create ODBC data sources or DSN-less connections that use connection strings and they should all work fine with SSL as well.
If this didn't solve your issue, then you probably have something different happening in your environment.