openssl - How to save public key from a certificate in .pem format

Question

I am using the below openssl command for storing my public key into a .pem file.

openssl> x509 -in E:/mycert.pem -pubkey  -out E:/mypubkey.pem

But when i try to use this command, it is storing the whole certificate info in the mypubkey.pem file.

I have seen that i can save my public key using

openssl> x509 -pubkey -noout -in cert.pem > pubkey.pem

But it is throwing an error. I can't use ">" operator.

Answer 1

There are a couple ways to do this.

First, instead of going into openssl command prompt mode, just enter everything on one command line from the Windows prompt:

E:> openssl x509 -pubkey -noout -in cert.pem  > pubkey.pem

If for some reason, you have to use the openssl command prompt, just enter everything up to the ">". Then OpenSSL will print out the public key info to the screen. You can then copy this and paste it into a file called pubkey.pem.

openssl> x509 -pubkey -noout -in cert.pem

Output will look something like this:

-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----
MIIBIjANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQEFAAOCAQ8AMIIBCgKCAQEAryQICCl6NZ5gDKrnSztO
3Hy8PEUcuyvg/ikC+VcIo2SFFSf18a3IMYldIugqqqZCs4/4uVW3sbdLs/6PfgdX
7O9D22ZiFWHPYA2k2N744MNiCD1UE+tJyllUhSblK48bn+v1oZHCM0nYQ2NqUkvS
j+hwUU3RiWl7x3D2s9wSdNt7XUtW05a/FXehsPSiJfKvHJJnGOX0BgTvkLnkAOTd
OrUZ/wK69Dzu4IvrN4vs9Nes8vbwPa/ddZEzGR0cQMt0JBkhk9kU/qwqUseP1QRJ
5I1jR4g8aYPL/ke9K35PxZWuDp3U0UPAZ3PjFAh+5T+fc7gzCs9dPzSHloruU+gl
FQIDAQAB
-----END PUBLIC KEY-----