People have encountered problems with activation (due to changed private key?) on disposable installations on the cloud (could be Magnolia cloud or other cloud based solutions of on-premise-customers).

There is a approach how to overcome it. Let's document it.

Possible approach:

• Describe the situation as simple as possible. Reader should understand the issue.
  • Which keys are where / on which instances.
  • Which processes requires which kind of keys.
• Describe the use cases which may lead to issues
  • Possibly corrupted / hacked system
    • requires a new private key and the generation of a new public key
  • Custom cloud based installation gets disposed & and re-setup again
    • Back-up the private key upfront in order to reuse it again;
      Automate backing-up and reusing of the private key - do not rely on Magnolia only in this case 
    • Note that The Magnolia Cloud ensures that the private key is reused after disposal and re-setup
• Possible key issues & how to solve
  • Public key has been generated on author; possible reasons: by accident; because the private key has changed
    • Delete public keys manually on public nodes
    • On the password app:
      • Set the passwords again (they are hashed based on the public key)
      • Publish the password nodes
  • Private key must be replaced
    • Make sure your system is well protected (platitude)
    • regenerate the public key
    • Execute the steps as explained above in the section Public key has been generated on author

Audience

The target audience is system admins / developers using Magnolia.

Cloud

Since the Magnolia Cloud offering takes care for the environment - e.g. by creating backups which include a backup of the private key (in a file) and the public key (which is stored in JCR) - cloud users should not be affected.
However - there is one use case:
A cloud user accidentally hits the "Regenerate public key" button.

• The cloud user must contact support in order to delete the public keys on the public instances.
• The cloud user must re-enter all the passwords stored via password manager and publish the items of the password manager

On premise or custom/self-created-cloud-solution users

All above use cases may occur.