Certificate always created with 90 day validity!

Question

Hi,
I switched to using J2SDK 1.4.2.03 and now whenever I create a certificate it is created with a 90 day validity regardless of what I provide for the "validity" option. I'm fairly certain the previous version I was using did not have this problem. Here are the commands as executed (I changed the password and removed paths to cacerts).
keytool -delete -v -keystore cacerts -storepass password -alias gateway
keytool -genkey -v -keyalg RSA -keysize 512 -keystore cacerts -storepass password -alias gateway -validity 5
keytool -selfcert -v -keystore cacerts -storepass password -alias gateway
I tried various values of validity above and below 90 but it always comes out as 90. If anyone can suggest a solution to this I would appreciate it!
Dominique

Answer 1

Very strange. I had no problem using 1.4.2_03. Can you show us the:
keytool -list -v -keystore cacerts
output that shows a validity period going in reverse? Your system clock date didn't change, did it? Never seen that before. I got:
% keytool -selfcert -v -keystore cacerts -storepass password -alias gateway -validity 1821
New certificate (self-signed):
Version: V1
Subject: CN=Joe, OU=Java, O=Sun, L=SCA, ST=CA, C=US
Signature Algorithm: MD5withRSA, OID = 1.2.840.113549.1.1.4
Key: SunJSSE RSA public key:
...deleted...
Validity: [From: Thu Jun 10 09:33:05 PDT 2004,
               To: Fri Jun 05 09:33:05 PDT 2009]
Issuer: CN=Joe, OU=Java, O=Sun, L=SCA, ST=CA, C=US
SerialNumber: [    40c88d41]
...deleted...
BTW, -genkey generates a self-signed cert, you don't need to go through the extra -selfcert
step unless you want to replace the current self-cert in the keystore.
In the third example (-selfcert), it will default back to 90 days if you don't specify the validity period.