due to all that has been going on it took a while to get back to this issue. it was multiple things happening at the same time. 1) firmware on one device needed to be updated to accept certs properly. 2) unknown lockup issues, I rebuilt the vm from scratch to re-verify results and it works fine now. 3) web interface stupidity which it does not give a proper error message. after trying them in the console i got errors like host name does not match or cert missing domain etc. after trying for some time i corrected all the information in the consoles so they would build a proper cert and import it. I was not getting proper errors from the console before so i suspect the previous install had issues. the ui was useless for importing the csr even when every thing was correct. the exported part was usable though. I am left with 1 device that i have to generate every thing for it on a seperate system and then import it the exact directions are " Uploaded certificates must be in OpenSSL PEM format with an unencrypted private key." i have not had a chance to poke at that one yet and dont have much of an idea on how to do that properly.