Installing the FIPS client driver for ODBC and vsql

Vertica offers a FIPS client for FIPS-compatible systems.

Vertica offers a FIPS client for FIPS-compatible systems. A FIPS-compatible system is FIPS-enabled and includes the OpenSSL libraries.

The FIPS client supports ODBC and vsql and is offered in 64-bit only.

Prerequisites

Verify that your host system is running a FIPS-compliant operating system that Vertica supports.

The FIPS client installer checks your host system for the value of the sysctl parameter, crypto.fips_enabled. You must set this parameter to 1 (enabled). If your host is not enabled, the client does not install.

Installing the FIPS client

To install the FIPS client driver package:

Download the FIPS client package from the Vertica driver downloads page.
Log in to the client system as root.
Install the RPM package that you downloaded:
```
# rpm -Uvh package_name.rpm
```

For ODBC, after you have installed the client package, create a DSN and set some additional configuration parameters. For more information, see:

You can optionally add the vsql client to your PATH environment variable so that you do not need to enter its full path to run it. To do so, add the following to the .profile file in your home directory or the global /etc/profile file:

export PATH=$PATH:/opt/vertica/bin

How the client searches for OpenSSL libraries

When you launch the client application to connect to the server, the client searches for and loads the OpenSSL libraries libcrypto.so.10 and libssl.so.10 for supported OpenSSL versions:

The client first checks to see if LD_LIBRARY_PATH is set.
If the LD_LIBARY_PATH location does not include the libraries, it checks RunPath, either /opt/vertica/lib or within the ODBC or vsql directory structure (../lib).

Important

The LD_LIBRARY_PATH, if set, directs the search path for the OpenSSL libraries. The client loads the libraries from any set or preset LD_LIBRARY_PATH location.

The following figure depicts the search process for the OpenSSL libraries: