Unable to load Private Key. (PEM routines:PEM_read_bio:no start line:pem_lib.c:648:Expecting: ANY PRIVATE KEY) [closed]

Question

Open the key file in Notepad++ and verify the encoding. If it says UTF-8-BOM then change it to UTF-8. Save the file and try again.

I changed the header and footer of the PEM file to

-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----

and

-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----

Finally, it works!

Your .key file contains illegal characters. You can check .key file like this:

# file server.key

output "server.key: UTF-8 Unicode (with BOM) text" means it is a plain text, not a key file. The correct output should be "server.key: PEM RSA private key".

Use below command to remove illegal characters:

# tail -c +4 server.key > new_server.key

The new_server.key should be correct.

For more detail, you can click here

Create CA certificate

openssl genrsa -out privateKey.pem 4096
openssl req -new -x509 -nodes -days 3600 -key privateKey.pem -out caKey.pem

> I have a .key file which is PEM formatted private key file.
> ...
> Here's some asn1parse of the .key file...

That it appears OK with asn1parse leads me to believe its not PEM encoded.

---

Is there anything more I can try?

Because it appears to be ASN.1, try:

$ openssl rsa -in server.key -inform DER -modulus -noout

Notice the -inform DER to switch between encodings.