title: Creating a CSR with a PEM formatted Key
body: <p>I have run into a CSR generation problem I can't seem to explain and was wondering if someone could either help me with my command, or tell me what I am generating.</p>
  
  <p>I think I am generating CRT Certificates in PEM format, but it seems my key is not in PEM format !?</p>
  
  <p>Here is what I do, and what I get.
  I create a CSR with:</p>
  
  <p><code>openssl req -nodes -new -newkey rsa:2048 -sha256 -out test.csr</code></p>
  
  <p>This generate 2 files:
  <strong>privkey.pem</strong> and <strong>test.csr</strong> </p>
  
  <p>Now when I try and update some servers, they complain that my Private key is not in PEM format. <em>nginx and apache seem happy with my key.</em></p>
  
  <p>When I then convert the key with:</p>
  
  <p><code>openssl rsa -in privkey.pem -out privkey.rsa.pem</code></p>
  
  <p>It works !?! </p>
  
  <p>vimdiff shows me the difference in the files visually, and one can see that not only is the heading different, but the content is also been changed (after the first 4 characters)</p>
  
  <p><strong>And thus my question</strong></p>
  
  <p>is the key created in DER - PEM format, even though I specify not to use DER in the create line ?</p>