Wrong number of fields with openssl

Question

I am trying to run this command

 openssl ca -config openssl.cnf -extensions usr_cert -days 375 -notext -md sha256 -in keycsr.pem -out keycert.pem

and i get this error

wrong number of fields on line 2 (looking for field 6, got 5, '' left)

I deleted an entry from my index.txt file recently. is it because of that?

Answer 1

Quite likely.

This error usually occurs when spaces or newlines are used instead of tabs in the file.

Make sure that the editor you use does not automatically transform tabs into spaces and remove any extra newline created when you remove an entry.