1-9 
 
z  If a PKI domain already has a local certificate, creating an RSA key pair will result in inconsistency 
between the key pair and the certificate. To generate a new RSA key pair, delete the local 
certificate and then issue the public-key local create command. 
z  A newly created key pair will overwrite the existing one. If you perform the public-key local create 
command in the presence of a local RSA key pair, the system will ask you whether you want to 
overwrite the existing one. 
z  If a PKI domain has already a local certificate, you cannot request another certificate for it. This is to 
avoid inconsistency between the certificate and the registration information resulting from 
configuration changes. To request a new certificate, use the pki delete-certificate command to 
delete the existing local certificate and the CA certificate stored locally. 
z  When it is impossible to request a certificate from the CA through SCEP, you can save the request 
information by using the pki request-certificate domain command with the pkcs10 and filename 
keywords, and then send the file to the CA by an out-of-band means.  
z  Make sure the clocks of the entity and the CA are synchronous. Otherwise, the validity period of the 
certificate will be abnormal. 
z  The pki request-certificate domain configuration will not be saved in the configuration file. 
 
Retrieving a Certificate Manually 
You can download an existing CA certificate, local certificate, or peer entity certificate from the CA 
server and save it locally. To do so, you can use two ways: online and offline. In offline mode, you need 
to retrieve a certificate by an out-of-band means like FTP, disk, e-mail and then import it into the local 
PKI system. 
Certificate retrieval serves two purposes: 
z  Locally store the certificates associated with the local security domain for improved query efficiency 
and reduced query count,  
z  Prepare for certificate verification.  
Before retrieving a local certificate in online mode, be sure to complete LDAP server configuration. 
Follow these steps to retrieve a certificate manually:  
To do…  Use the command…  Remarks 
Enter system view 
system-view 
— 
Online 
pki retrieval-certificate { ca | local } 
domain domain-name 
Retrieve a 
certificate 
manually 
Offline 
pki import-certificate { ca | local } 
domain domain-name { der | p12 | pem } 
[ filename filename ] 
Required 
Use either 
command.