Fatal FIPS Selftest Failures

This document (7016637) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12
Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS)

Situation

OpenSSH fails to start with the following errors:


sshd-gen-keys-start[1033]: fips.c(137): OpenSSL internal error, assertion failed: FATAL FIPS SELFTEST FAILURE
systemd[1]: Failed to start OpenSSH Daemon.

Other errors include:


wicked: Libgcrypt error: integrity check using '/usr/lib64/.libgcrypt.so.20.hmac' failed: No such file or directory
wicked: Libgcrypt notice: state transition Self-Test => Error
wicked: __ni__hashctx_new: gcry_md_open failed
wicked: cannot generate uuid for lo config - hashing failed
wicked: cannot generate uuid for eth0 config - hashing failed

Cat /proc/sys/crypto/fips_enabled shows 1

Cat /proc/cmdline includes fips=1

Running 'rpm -qa | grep fips' shows only: libfipscheck1 and fipscheck packages installed.

Resolution

1. Reboot the server without the fips=1 kernel option.
2. Install the "FIPS 140-2 specific packages" pattern or (zypper install patterns-sles-fips)
3. Reconfigure FIPS. (See TID7016636 - FIPS installed but not working)
4. Reboot the server with fips=1 kernel option.

Cause

FIPS was enabled, but the FIPS packages for user mode were not installed.

Disclaimer

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