I’m trying to import a certificate .p12 into Firefox.
I’m running the standard Fedora 40 (so gnome 46?).
Please bare with me, and keep in mind I just switched from Win 7 to first time ever Linux today, so this is all new and somewhat cunfusing to me (I also have a problem with NVIDIA kernel module missing - but that’s for another topic)…what have I gotten myself into…
After successfully entering the password I get this error: “The PKCS #12 operation failed for unknown reasons.” (Edit: imported through Firefox settings in Certificates, View certificates, Your certificates)
I don’t have a clue how to import the PKCS#12 into the Linux system, so that’s another issue…
I did find a similar topic open, but felt completely overwhelmedreading all of it as I din’t understand much.
Could someone be so kind and help me with the .p12 installation please?
TL;DR version: you should be thankful that Firefox (actually, Fedora) refused to import your certificate. It most likely was generated with poor (unsafe by modern standards) encryption.
First of all: try to calm down, and keep it cool. Yes, Linux can seem overwhelming at first, and there’s a lot to learn, but you’ll get the hang of it. Once you feel more comfortable, you won’t want to go back
Now, for the problem at hand: it does seem to be the same problem I had on that other post. To sum it up: my .p12 certificate (and most likely yours as well) was created using encryption that is considered insecure for Fedora’s standards. The error message is totally misleading, so it makes sense to feel lost – it took me quite some time to finally understand what was going on.
If you follow the exact steps I described on the other post, you should be able to unpack the certificate and the private key from the .p12 file (which is essentially an encrypted “container” for these two files). Once you unpack these files, you can easily generate a new .p12 file with standard (stronger) encryption standards, and this new file should be imported just fine by Firefox.
So, try to run the commands on the post with the solution (replacing the <file> placeholder for your .p12 file name) in order, and let me know if you run into any trouble – if you do, make sure you post here the exact error messages.
