Solved: error:0909006C:PEM routines:get_name:no start line

I was working on a code deployed in AWS Lambda. The code is written in Node.js. Using axios package, we are making a request to a new HTTPS API endpoint. We already had a mail containing different formats of SSL certificates used by the API server.

We took the first certificate format and attached it to our axios request as an http agent object. The request failed and the error we saw is this:

error:0909006C:PEM routines:get_name:no start line

The issue was that, we took the incorrect PEM file from the mail. It did not contain proper header and footer.

In ideal case, the certificate when opened should contain the proper header and footer. If we open the certificate file using a text editor, we should see a proper header and footer like below:

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----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-----END CERTIFICATE-----

In my case, the proper header(-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----) and footer(-----END CERTIFICATE-----) were missing. When I used the file with correct header and footer, the axios request worked.