HOWTO: Make certificates available to Eduroam / network manager

[goebbe]

This short howto shows how to put the available CA-certificates into one *.crt files.
Once done, you can point your network manager config to this new *.crt file and it will automatically find the required public certificate.

Tested on Linux Mint 21.2 and 21.3 which are both based on Ubuntu 22.04.

Background: There are many ways to implement access to Eduroam. Most of them require the use of a public CA certificate in order to enable encryption, i.e. encrypted access (vial SSL web standards) to your university server.

While in most operation systems (e.g in Android or Windows) the CA-certificates are installed and available for network connections by default, in Linux Mint additional steps are necessary:

1. Make sure that the ca-certificates are installed on your system:

Code: Select all

sudo apt install -y ca-certificates

2. Create one big ca-certificates.crt file that contains all available ca-certificates:

Code: Select all

sudo update-ca-certificates

3. Now you can point your network manager to the updated ca-certificates.crt file - instead of a specific certificate.
The ca-certificates can be found at the following path:

Code: Select all

/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt

E.g. via Advanced Network Configuration > eduroam > Wi-Fi Security > CA certificate

Now, if your institute / university uses a public certificate (or switches to new one), the network manager will find and use the new certificate. (like in Android or Windows)

Please keep in mind that there are many different ways to implement Access to Eduroam. Ask your network administrator for details and the required settings. This little howto is just and only about the (required) CA-certificates.
Happy eduroaming!