Unable to process private key

Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos nmav at gnutls.org
Tue Oct 11 17:30:54 CEST 2011


On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 4:24 AM, Erinn Looney-Triggs
<erinn.looneytriggs at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am receiving the following error when trying to use gnutls-cli:
> gnutls-cli --x509cafile /etc/pki/certmaster/ca.cert --x509keyfile
> foo.example.com.pem --x509certfile foo.example.com.cert -p 514
> bar.example.com
> Processed 1 CA certificate(s).
> Processed 1 client certificates...
> *** Error loading key file: Base64 decoding error.

I suppose it is a base64 decoding error? It could be that there are
carriage returns, spaces or tabs in the PEM encoded file and gnutls
2.8.x doesn't like them.

> I am able to successfully render the private key using openssl:
> openssl rsa -noout -text -in <key>

openssl as well as Gnutls 2.12.x are more liberal in PEM (base64) decoding.

> Is their an equivalent command for gnutls?

Upgrade to 2.12.x or use openssl to convert the file to "correct"
encoding and then try loading again.

regards,
Nikos




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