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What is an APSP certificate? and how do I renew it?

I have a Mac Mini server with Mountain lion server on it. I use it for Web site serving, and I have File Sharing active on it.


I started getting the following notifications:


Certificate Expires Soon - APSP:34a61ab4-43ce-43e1-8a45-036445c241a0

The following certificate is about to expire on your server, web4.local:
Name: APSP:34a61ab4-43ce-43e1-8a45-036445c241a0
Expiration Date: 16 December, 2012 10:59:27 AM EST


It seems that the server has 4 of these certificates and I get 4 notifications every day.


I could find nothing about them. What's the service they support? where to renew them? How do I turn off this notification if there isn't much that I can do about them.


Under the server hardware's settings pane, I checked all the SSL Certificates that I have and the local self-signed ones and none of them expire in 2012.


So I'm confused to say the least.

Posted on Nov 24, 2012 5:59 PM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Dec 7, 2012 7:46 AM

I'm in the same boat. Here's what I've found out:


These certificates are used by the "Apple Push Notification Service" (APNS) and apparently have nothing to do with Cisco's Access Point Security Protocol (APSP). Push Notifications are used to do things like immediately alert you of new mail on your iPhone (rather than have the iPhone polling every few minutes to check if there is new mail).


Now, how to renew them (in theory because it doesn't work for me - it might for you):


1) open the "Server" application

2) in the Hardware section (top left), click your server

3) click the "Settings" tab

4) presumably "Enable Apple push notifications" is already checked. (if not, delete or move the expiring certificates out of /etc/certificates and that should stop the alert emails)

5) click the "Edit" button after "Enable Apple push notifications"

6) a drop down panel will show the apple ID and expiry for your Apple Push Notification Service certificate. The expiry will probably be in red. Click the Renew button.

7) enter the password for your Apple ID and click Renew certificate.


Hopefully that works for you. I end up with a "An unexpected error (-1) has occurred". If I click on the "Manage your certificates" link, I'm directed to an apple site that has a certificate expiry about 8 months after the one in the Settings page. I'm guessing that's the one being used and not the one shown in my settings page. I'll wait until after the certificates expire, see if anything breaks then delete the expired certificates.


If anyone knows how to determine which APSP:<uuid> certificate is being used on OSX Server or how the Apple Push Notification picks which certificate to use, please let me know. I have five APSP certificates in /etc/certificates and I suspect only one is needed.


Cheers,

Dean

16 replies

What is an APSP certificate? and how do I renew it?

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