[Freeipa-users] PEM and DER certificate formats

[John Dennis]

On 01/06/2012 04:55 PM, Rob Crittenden wrote:
> The cli outputs a base64 blob of data.

Yes, it output a base64 blob to stdout. But that base64 blob is 
completely non-standard as an exchange format, it's just a textual 
encoding of the binary DER data.

However the cli can write PEM format to a file using the --out option. 
PEM is standard and you should have no problems finding code that 
accepts PEM. I would strongly suggest you stick to standard PEM and use 
utilities to convert it to DER only if the software you're importing it 
is borked and can't accept PEM.

> If you took that and ran it through a base64 decoder you'd have DER
> format. You can't get DER directly right now. We could probably add
> an option to write a file in DER format if you wanted to open an RFE
> on our trac instance.


-- 
John Dennis <jdennis at redhat.com>

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