What Is PEM Certificate Bundle

PKI Certificate Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟What Is PEM Certificate Bundle

This section describes what is PEM certificate bundle - a concatenation of multiple certificates in PEM format.

What Is PEM Certificate Bundle? A PEM certificate bundle is a text file of a concatenation of multiple certificates in PEM format.

Main features of PEM certificate bundle are:

PEM certificate bundles have no password protections.
PEM certificate bundles can be created and managed by a text editor.
Linux Trust Store maintains maintains 2 PEM certificate bundles for trusted root CA certificates at /etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt with no trust flags and /etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.trust.crt with trust flags.
Some CA (Certificate Authorities) may use a PEM certificate bundle to store a single certificate chain from the root CA certificate to the end entity certificate.

Here is an example of PEM certificate bundle for trusted root CA certificates.

herong$ more /etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt

# ACCVRAIZ1
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
MIIH0zCCBbugAwIBAgIIXsO3pkN/pOAwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEFBQAwQjESMBAGA1UE
AwwJQUNDVlJBSVoxMRAwDgYDVQQLDAdQS0lBQ0NWMQ0wCwYDVQQKDARBQ0NWMQsw
...
pPVWQxaZLPSkVrQ0uGE3ycJYgBugl6H8WY3pEfbRD0tVNEYqi4Y7
-----END CERTIFICATE-----

# AC RAIZ FNMT-RCM
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
MIIFgzCCA2ugAwIBAgIPXZONMGc2yAYdGsdUhGkHMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBCwUAMDsx
CzAJBgNVBAYTAkVTMREwDwYDVQQKDAhGTk1ULVJDTTEZMBcGA1UECwwQQUMgUkFJ
...
uu8wd+RU4riEmViAqhOLUTpPSPaLtrM=
-----END CERTIFICATE-----

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