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PortaSoft
Participating Frequently
December 9, 2012
Question

iOS Certificate

  • December 9, 2012
  • 1 reply
  • 2349 views

Hey, I've created my distrubtion certificate but when I try to publish my app with it, I get an error about a password, there was nowhere for me to set a password on it and I don't for the life of me know what it could be. Ive tried my iOS developers password, my mac's keychain password and my development certificate password (that was created in OpenSSL). Also when trying to locate the certificate to put it into the box the certificate is grayed out and i have to manually type the address of the file.


Thanks

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1 reply

kglad
Community Expert
kgladCommunity Expert
Community Expert
December 9, 2012
  1. Go to the https://developer.apple.com/devcenter/ios/index.action using a Mac computer or a virtual Mac
  2. Log-in.
  3. Click on the iOS Dev Center link. 
  4. Click iOS Provisioning Portal link.  (See Fig08-04.)
  5. Click the Certificates link in the left panel.
  6. Click the Distribution tab in the right panel.
  7. Click the Request Certificate button in the right panel.
  8. Follow the directions using Keychain Access to create your Distribution Certificate.  (See Fig 08-05.)  Apple has easy-to-follow directions to create a Certificate Signing Request that is used to create your Certificate. The steps needed to create a Certificate Signing Request appear in the right panel after step 7.  The only part I stumble on is when instructed to open Certificate Assistant.  You will find it at the top left of your Mac's screen after clicking Keychain Access, not in the Keychain Access window. 
  9. The right panel should change to show your Certificate is Pending Issuance.  Refresh the page and you should see Your Certificate is Issued and ready for download. (See Fig08-06.) 
  10. Download your ios_distribution.cer by clicking the download button.
  11. Download an AppleWWDRCA.cer by clicking the "*If you do not have the WWDR intermediate certificate installed, click here to download now." link.
  12. Open both files in Keychain Access (using the login Keychain). 
  13. Right click your private key in Keychain Access (you may need to expand the iPhone Distribution Certificate shown in your Keychain Access window) and click Export.  Make sure File format is Personal Information Exchange (.p12) and click Save.  You will be prompted for a password that you must remember.  You will use that password each and every time you publish an iOS game for distribution and you will use your .p12 (Distribution Certificate) file for all the apps/games you develop (until your certificate expires and you pay another $99 and follow these steps again).
P
PortaSoftAuthor
Participating Frequently
December 9, 2012

Hey, thanks for the swift reply.

I've tried this and followed all the steps but I as I am uploading its giving me an error:

The digital certificate is invalid.

Could not retreive certificate chain from Keystore.

I am exporting just the private key in my keychain, is that correct?

I had the WWDR file and my iOS Distribution file in my keychain.


Thanks alot ^^


EDIT: After a few hours of repeating these steps I finally realised what Kglad meant by expanding the iPhone Distrubtion Certificate by going to the left and clicking certificates, expanding it and then exporting that private key, thanks again.

sinious
sinious
Legend
December 10, 2012

Yes you must use the roll down and export that into the .p12.

You initially mentioned using openssl to generate the certificate. Just to clarify 2 things.

1, you must have generated a CSR with OpenSSL to submit to the iOS dev portals certificate request. You user a key that you generated using OpenSSL. Once you upload that CSR and your certificate is approved you get your .cer file (one distribution, one development). Here's that process explained by Adobe:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/as3/iphone/WS144092a96ffef7cc-371badff126abc17b1f-8000.html

You must keep the key handy. Now say you grab the distribution .cer file. At that point there's a couple steps to turn it into a .p12. You need to convert the .cer file into a .pem file. Using that PEM file and your key file you create the .p12 that requires you to enter the password. That password is required when exporting.

Here's an Adobe article on converting the .cer into a .p12 using OpenSSL:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/as3/iphone/WS144092a96ffef7cc-371badff126abc17b1f-7fff.html

I myself have an iMac and I originally used it to generate the CSR then the p12 (it does it automatically now in Xcode). However there's a problem.

2, The thing you should know is you cannot regenerate a new certificate on a different machine. This is important to know because if you don't have access to the same Mac or only have different Windows machines around you (my scenario) and you need to generate a new .cer (because you made a new app) then you're out of luck.

For that reason I no longer use Keychain and the above process, I stick strictly to OpenSSL. By doing that I don't require any specific computer to be around to regenerate certs. Just by understanding how to easily make my certs in OpenSSL I'm no longer chained to any one machine.

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