How to get .pem file from .key and .crt files?

Question

How can I create a PEM file from an SSL certificate?

These are the files that I have available:

• .crt
• server.csr
• server.key

Answer 1

Additionally, if you don't want it to ask for a passphrase, then need to run the following command:

openssl rsa -in server.key -out server.key

Answer 2

What I have observed is: if you use openssl to generate certificates, it captures both the text part and the base64 certificate part in the crt file. The strict pem format says (wiki definition) that the file should start and end with BEGIN and END.

.pem – (Privacy Enhanced Mail) Base64 encoded DER certificate, enclosed between "-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----" and "-----END CERTIFICATE-----"

So for some libraries (I encountered this in java) that expect strict pem format, the generated crt would fail the validation as an 'invalid pem format'.

Even if you copy or grep the lines with BEGIN/END CERTIFICATE, and paste it in a cert.pem file, it should work.

Here is what I do, not very clean, but works for me, basically it filters the text starting from BEGIN line:

grep -A 1000 BEGIN cert.crt > cert.pem

Answer 3

Your keys may already be in PEM format, but just named with .crt or .key.

If the file's content begins with -----BEGIN and you can read it in a text editor:

The file uses base64, which is readable in ASCII, not binary format. The certificate is already in PEM format. Just change the extension to .pem.

If the file is in binary:

For the server.crt, you would use

openssl x509 -inform DER -outform PEM -in server.crt -out server.crt.pem

For server.key, use openssl rsa in place of openssl x509.

The server.key is likely your private key, and the .crt file is the returned, signed, x509 certificate.

If this is for a Web server and you cannot specify loading a separate private and public key:

You may need to concatenate the two files. For this use:

cat server.crt server.key > server.includesprivatekey.pem

I would recommend naming files with "includesprivatekey" to help you manage the permissions you keep with this file.

Answer 4

1. Download certificate from provisional portal by appleId,
2. Export certificate  from Key chain and  give name (Certificates.p12),
3. Open terminal and goto folder where you save above Certificates.p12 file,

4. Run below commands:

   a) openssl pkcs12 -in Certificates.p12 -out CertificateName.pem -nodes,

   b) openssl pkcs12 -in Certificates.p12 -out pushcert.pem -nodes -clcerts

5. Your .pem file ready "pushcert.pem".

Answer 5

I needed to do this for an AWS ELB. After getting beaten up by the dialog many times, finally this is what worked for me:

openssl rsa -in server.key -text > private.pem
openssl x509 -inform PEM -in server.crt > public.pem

Thanks NCZ

Edit: As @floatingrock says

With AWS, don't forget to prepend the filename with file://. So it'll look like:

 aws iam upload-server-certificate --server-certificate-name blah --certificate-body file://path/to/server.crt --private-key file://path/to/private.key --path /cloudfront/static/

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/iam/upload-server-certificate.html

Answer 6

Trying to upload a GoDaddy certificate to AWS I failed several times, but in the end it was pretty simple. No need to convert anything to .pem. You just have to be sure to include the GoDaddy bundle certificate in the chain parameter, e.g.

aws iam upload-server-certificate
    --server-certificate-name mycert
    --certificate-body file://try2/40271b1b25236fd1.crt
    --private-key file://server.key
    --path /cloudfront/production/
    --certificate-chain file://try2/gdig2_bundle.crt

And to delete your previous failed upload you can do

aws iam delete-server-certificate --server-certificate-name mypreviouscert