title: creating self-signed certificates with open ssl on windows
body: <p>I am following <a href="https://jamielinux.com/docs/openssl-certificate-authority/create-the-intermediate-pair.html" rel="noreferrer">these guidelines</a> to generate self-signed certificates with OpenSSL.</p>
  
  <p>I am under Windows 10. My working directory is as follows:</p>
  
  <pre><code>PS E:\Certificats\predix\root\ca&gt; ls
  
  
      Directory: E:\Certificats\predix\root\ca
  
  
  Mode                LastWriteTime         Length Name
  ----                -------------         ------ ----
  d-----         9/1/2016  11:57 AM                certs
  d-----         9/1/2016  11:55 AM                crl
  d-----         9/1/2016  12:00 PM                intermediate
  d-----         9/1/2016  11:55 AM                newcerts
  d-----         9/1/2016  11:56 AM                private
  -a----         9/1/2016  11:55 AM              2 index.txt
  -a----         9/1/2016  11:56 AM           4306 openssl.cnf
  -a----         9/1/2016  11:55 AM             14 serial
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>After several steps in the guideline, when I type</p>
  
  <pre><code>openssl ca -config openssl.cnf -extensions v3_intermediate_ca -days 3650 -notext -md s
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I get the following error</p>
  
  <pre><code>Using configuration from openssl.cnf
  Enter pass phrase for ./private/ca.key.pem:
  unable to load number from ./serial
  error while loading serial number
  12944:error:0D066096:asn1 encoding routines:a2i_ASN1_INTEGER:short line:.\crypto\asn1\f_int.c:212:
  PS E:\Certificats\predix\root\ca&gt; openssl ca -config openssl.cnf -extensions v3_intermediate_ca -days 3650 -notext -md sha256 -in intermediate/csr/intermediate.csr.pem  -out intermediate/certs/intermediate.cert.pem
  Using configuration from openssl.cnf
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>telling me that it has some issue reading the serial file.</p>
  
  <p>The content of serial is</p>
  
  <pre><code>1000
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Does anyone have a fix for this ? The file exists and its pathname in the conf file is the correct...</p>