Websphere Personal Cert Errors and potential solution – Updated 2025

Summary: When trying to replace a cert with a new imported PFX cert, we get the error below (whether we select delete old cert/signers or not).

“Failed to load due to the following error: keystore file exists, but is empty”, specifically complaining about the root-key.p12 file in the path below.

IMPORTANT: make sure this file is empty before proceeding else it could be a different issue. Backup the entire VM before proceeding.

Potential resolution to above error:

1. Go to the specified directory and delete the root-key.p12 file.
2. Press okay again and it will complain about the default-signers.p12 file, then go into that directory and delete it as well.
3. Press okay again and it may re-generate the default-signers.p12 file, delete it once more and try again.
4. If it keeps throwing the error, save to master and see if it updates anyways.
   

 

Other potential solution to the above issue (Updated 2025):

In the Websphere CA Certification Installation.docx word doc, go to Step 4 and follow instructions on generating and propagating the web server plug-ins. We did this before doing the steps above and this may have resolved the issue as well.

 

 

LBI Websphere cert error: When updating the certs in LBI websphere, when we imported and replaced, it complained about a security.xml file.

Potential solution:

1. Update the IIS certs and iisreset /restart after completing via CMD
2. Attempt to replace cert again, and just save to master even with error. Check the personal cert again to see if it saved configuration changes (or log back into websphere).

 

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