OpenSSL "ca" Error "./demoCA/newcerts: No such file or directory"

Q

Why I am getting the "./demoCA/newcerts: No such file or directory" error when running OpenSSL "ca" command?

✍: FYIcenter.com

A

If you are running the OpenSSL "ca" command installed with the slproweb binary package for Windows, you may get the "./demoCA/newcerts: No such file or directory" error as shown below:

C:\Users\fyicenter>\local\OpenSSL-Win32\bin\openssl.exe

OpenSSL> ca -in test.csr -keyfile my_ca.key -cert my_ca.crt
Using configuration from C:\local\OpenSSL-Win32\bin\openssl.cfg
Enter pass phrase for my_ca.key:fyicenter
I am unable to access the ./demoCA/newcerts directory
./demoCA/newcerts: No such file or directory
error in ca

This error is caused by the "dir=./demoCA" and "certs=$dir/certs" options in the configuration file. These options requires you to have a sub directory called "\demoCA\certs" under the current directory to save output signed certificates. This is needed even if you specify the output file name with the "-out" option.

Fixing this error is easy. Just create the sub directory: ./demoCA/newcerts, as shown below:

C:\Users\fyicenter>mkdir demoCA
C:\Users\fyicenter>mkdir demoCA\newcerts

 

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2022-07-26, 48194👍, 4💬