Cannot register RHEL 7 server (certificate verify failed) due to wrong time

Written by Claudio Kuenzler - 9 comments

Published on January 13th 2015 - Listed in Linux

---

I tried to register a newly installed Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 server with the subscription-manager command but got the following error:

subscription-manager register
Username: xxx
Password: xxx
Unable to verify server's identity: certificate verify failed

In the rhsm.log file there is the same error with a bit of more details but unfortunately nothing to point me in the right direction:

cat /var/log/rhsm/rhsm.log
[DEBUG] subscription-manager @connection.py:450 - Making request: GET https://subscription.rhn.redhat.com:443/subscription/users/xxx/owners
[ERROR] subscription-manager @managercli.py:156 - Error during registration: certificate verify failed
[ERROR] subscription-manager @managercli.py:157 - certificate verify failed

After some searching, I came across a Red Hat Solution, which mentions to check the current time.

Indeed, after having fixed the time, the registration worked:

date --set="13 JAN 2015 12:20:15"

subscription-manager register
Username: xxx
Password: xxx
The system has been registered with ID: xxx

Add a comment

Show form to leave a comment

Comments (newest first)

thanos from wrote on Nov 17th, 2020:

Thank you very much for all your quick replies. I will follow your last advice with the hope finding a way to resolve this issue and finally can use the yum. Thanks again!

---

ck from Switzerland wrote on Nov 17th, 2020:

As I do not have a CentOS 8 and time to play with this, I simply suggest that you restore your yum configs to a previous state if you have a backup. You may also want to re-create the base repository entry (see how do I install the stock CentOS repositories on stackexchange how to do this. In general subscription-manager may have caused a mixup in the repo lists. Not sure and not able to verify. That is all I provide as advice.

---

thanos from wrote on Nov 17th, 2020:

oh, I was on a completely wrong way. Thanks again for your help. As I can see after your help there is subscription-manager for centos too and I followed the instructions to install it.

When I type: sudo yum repolist here is my output:

[user@thanos ~]$ sudo yum repolist
Updating Subscription Management repositories.
Unable to read consumer identity
This system is not registered to Red Hat Subscription Management. You can use subscription-manager to register.
repo id repo name
AppStream CentOS-8 - AppStream
BaseOS CentOS-8 - Base
PowerTools CentOS-8 - PowerTools
epel Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64
epel-modular Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux Modular 8 - x86_64
extras CentOS-8 - Extras
getpagespeed-extras GetPageSpeed packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64
getpagespeed-extras-noarch GetPageSpeed packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - noarch
rpmfusion-free-updates RPM Fusion for EL 8 - Free - Updates


And when I type: ls yum.repos.d

CentOS-AppStream.repo CentOS-Devel.repo CentOS-PowerTools.repo epel-playground.repo fedora-rpmfusion.repo
CentOS-Base.repo CentOS-Extras.repo CentOS-Sources.repo epel.repo fedora-russian.repo
CentOS-centosplus.repo CentOS-fasttrack.repo CentOS-Vault.repo epel-testing-modular.repo getpagespeed-extras.repo
CentOS-CR.repo CentOS-HA.repo dgoodwin-subscription-manager-epel-8.repo epel-testing.repo rpmfusion-free-updates.repo
CentOS-Debuginfo.repo CentOS-Media.repo epel-modular.repo fedora.repo rpmfusion-free-updates-testing.repo



Now since the command "subscription-manager register" is the same, how do I say to my system to use the one I downloaded and not the rhel one?

Thank you very much for your support.

---

ck from Switzerland wrote on Nov 17th, 2020:

thanos, this subscription-manager is for RHEL systems only. Even though the command may be available in CentOS systems, it will not do anything helpful. See is subscription manager available for CentOS? on Serverfault. If your yum packet manager is not working there must be something wrong configured with it. Check the repo list (usually in /etc/yum.repos.d) and other yum settings (in /etc/yum.conf and /etc/yum/*). Maybe you also have an proxy for outgoing http/https connections and the 401 is coming from the proxy. In this case you need to configure yum to use the proxy.

---

thanos from wrote on Nov 17th, 2020:

Yes, you did read this right I have install CentOS 8 release: 8.2.2004 and when I am trying to download using yum or even dnf I get noticed that my machine isn't registered and that I can do it using subscription manager. Then I found your post and I did apply it to my system but still can't complete the subscription. So now I am sure that time is correct on my system and the message I am getting on rhsm.log is: 'HTTP error (401 - Unauthorized): Service not available, please try again later. Do you have any idea about how to face this? Thanks a lot for your quick replies.

---

ck from Switzerland wrote on Nov 17th, 2020:

thanos, did I read this right that you try to do this on a CentOS 8 (not RHEL8)? Maybe this causes this, as the Red Hat Subscription Manager detects that this is not a valid RHEL Linux?

---

ck from Switzerland wrote on Nov 16th, 2020:

Sorry thanos, I am currently not using any RHEL 8 system so I cannot help.

---

thanos from wrote on Nov 16th, 2020:

Hi, your post is very helpful. I am facing the same problem on centos8 and after I change the rhsm.conf due to wrong time, I am not seeing that message (certificate verify failed) but I am seeing this message now:
HTTP error (401 - Unauthorized): Service not available, please try again later

Could you help me with this? thanks in advance.

---

Todd E from Taiwan wrote on May 11th, 2015:

thanks so much for your post! I couldn't figure this one out. I wish Redhat was a bit more insightful.

---