openssl_csr_sign issues

Wondering if anyone else has run into the following problem (or if I'm missing something totally obvious). I've got a program that basically generates a key and certificate for a user who enters all the associated information (common name, passphrase, etc). So I've created a dummy CA cert and key that I keep on my server. Here's some example code: $cacert = "file://caselfsigncert.pem"; $cakey = array("file://caselfsignkey.pem", "insecureselfsignkey"); if ($privkey = openssl_pkey_new()) { openssl_pkey_export($privkey, $pkeyout, $passphrase); print "<h2>priv key</h2><pre>$pkeyout</pre>"; } if ($csr = openssl_csr_new($dn, $privkey)) { openssl_csr_export($csr, $csrout); print "<h2>CSR:</h2><pre>$csrout</pre>"; } if ($cert = openssl_csr_sign($csr, $cacert, $cakey, 365)) { openssl_x509_export($cert, $certout); print "<h2>x509:</h2><pre>$certout</pre>"; } My problem is that the last stanza ($cert = openssl_csr_sign...) doesn't work. I know that the certificate and key file are loaded and that passphrase is working (if I change either of the three variables I get openssl and/or PHP errors complaing the files are not found or the passphrase is invalid). When it does seemingly work, my program ceases all output and terminates. I originally didn't have each step enclosed in _if_ statements and that resulted in null output from the entriee program (even that parts that were working). So it seems like either openssl_csr_sign is broken, or that I'm using it in the wrong way (though the docs on php.net imply this is proper). One other note, if I use NULL instead of $cacert as the signing certificate it works fine (i.e. self signed certs). Anyone have any ideas? openssl0.9.6h php4.2.3 Thanks