Why I am getting the "unable to open './demoCA/index.txt'" error when running OpenSSL "ca" command?

If you are running the OpenSSL "ca" command installed with the slproweb binary package for Windows, you may get the "unable to open './demoCA/index.txt'" 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
./demoCA/index.txt: No such file or directory
unable to open './demoCA/index.txt'
9632:error:02001002:system library:fopen:No such file or directory:
   .\crypto\bio\bss_file.c:398:fopen('./demoCA/index.txt','rb')
9632:error:20074002:BIO routines:FILE_CTRL:system lib:.\crypto\bio\bss_file.c:400:
error in ca

This error is caused by the "dir=./demoCA" and "database=$dir/index.txt" options in the configuration file. These options requires you to have a file called "\demoCA\index.txt" under the current directory to be used as a database to keep track new certificates issued by new.

Fixing this error is easy. Just create an empty file: ./demoCA/index.txt, as shown below:

C:\Users\fyicenter>copy CON demoCA\index.txt
<Ctrl>-Z
        1 file(s) copied.

C:\Users\fyicenter>dir demoCA\index.txt
    10:27 PM                 0 index.txt

Note that press <Ctrl>-Z is the end the input stream to finish the copy command.

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⇑ OpenSSL "ca" Command

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