Error downloading CernVM FS software from CERN repository

[airnandez]

We noticed that there is currently an issue while downloading software packages from CERN repository. You may observe the following error message:

$ curl -O https://ecsft.cern.ch/dist/cvmfs/cvmfs-2.1.19/cvmfs-2.1.19-1.el6.x86_64.rpm
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
  0     0    0     0    0     0      0      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--     0
curl: (60) SSL certificate problem: Invalid certificate chain
More details here: http://curl.haxx.se/docs/sslcerts.html

curl performs SSL certificate verification by default, using a "bundle"
 of Certificate Authority (CA) public keys (CA certs). If the default
 bundle file isn't adequate, you can specify an alternate file
 using the --cacert option.
If this HTTPS server uses a certificate signed by a CA represented in
 the bundle, the certificate verification probably failed due to a
 problem with the certificate (it might be expired, or the name might
 not match the domain name in the URL).
If you'd like to turn off curl's verification of the certificate, use
 the -k (or --insecure) option.

The cause of this issue is that the server ecsft.cern.ch hosting the software is presenting a certificate which has a distinguished name (DN) cernvm.cern.ch. The curl command above notices that the host name and the certificate DN do not match and stops.

We were told by the CernVM FS developers that this is a transient situation and will be fixed soon. The turnaround is to add the -k option to the curl command, for instance:

$ curl -k -O https://ecsft.cern.ch/dist/cvmfs/cvmfs-2.1.19/cvmfs-2.1.19-1.el6.x86_64.rpm

We will keep this issue open until the problem with the server is fixed.

[airnandez]

On 2015-11-11 the server certificate for host ecsft.cern.ch was renewed. The issue reported above is now considered solved.