After finally being available in my part of the world, I rushed out and purchased the new Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. To my dismay, I discovered that all HTTPS services through-out the OS were not work (Safari HTTPS, secure IMAP, etc). This was especially problematic because MSN Messenger 4.01 was no longer working, as it relies on the built-in security framework of OS X to perform its authentication.
For me, my Mac's DVD-ROM drive is failing, so i'm reluctant to use it. From my PC I created an ISO image of the 10.4 DVD and shuttled it across to my Mac. I made the appropriate changes necessary to the Tiger disk image and performed a Clean Install of 10.4 onto an empty partition while booted up on 10.3.9. Under this configuration, I got the following directories in /System/Library/Keychains/:
376K ./Anchors *
148K ./Certificates *
Tiger installed successfully from 10.3.9, however HTTPS services were disabled through-out the OS.
A few re-installs later (also from 10.3.9), I installed 10.4 from an unmodified ISO image while booted on 10.4 to another empty partition. Under this configuration, I got the following files in /System/Library/Keychains/:
224K X509Anchors *
86K X509Certificates *
Under this configuration, HTTPS services successfully worked through-out the OS (incl MSN).
After several more test-run and experiment installs of 10.4 , I can conclude that if you are experiencing HTTPS difficulties in Tiger, make sure you are booted on 10.4 while installing Tiger. Under this setup, The installer will place the two correct files (X509Anchor and X509Certificates) necessary for HTTPS services to function.
* file-size according to Terminal.app
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