Error message for missing --cacert file is obtuse #19583
Description
I did this
I had a bit of a PEBKAC moment running a command like:
curl \
--fail-with-body \
--cacert cert/selfsigned.crt \
--user "$(< auth )" \
-O \
"https://example.com/data/some-file"
The output was:
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 0
curl: (77) error adding trust anchors from file: cert/selfsigned.crt
The problem turned out to be that the cert/selfsigned.crt file was missing, which is clearly my fault. However I spent 15 minutes searching the web for answers before finally realising my mistake.
I expected the following
If the file argument to --cacert does not exist then an error like this is shown:
curl: cannot open '/tmp/hellox'
curl: try 'curl --help' for more information
curl: (26) Failed to open/read local data from file/application
(this is the error message for when the argument to -T, --upload-file does not exist)
curl/libcurl version
curl 8.17.0 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) libcurl/8.17.0 OpenSSL/3.6.0 zlib/1.3.1 brotli/1.1.0 zstd/1.5.7 libidn2/2.3.7 libpsl/0.21.5 libssh2/1.11.1 nghttp2/1.68.0 nghttp3/1.12.0 mit-krb5/1.21.3
Release-Date: 2025-11-05
Protocols: dict file ftp ftps gopher gophers http https imap imaps ipfs ipns mqtt pop3 pop3s rtsp scp sftp smb smbs smtp smtps telnet tftp ws wss
Features: alt-svc AsynchDNS brotli GSS-API HSTS HTTP2 HTTP3 HTTPS-proxy IDN IPv6 Kerberos Largefile libz NTLM PSL SPNEGO SSL threadsafe TLS-SRP UnixSockets zstd
operating system
Linux arch-torrent 6.16.10-arch1-1 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Thu, 02 Oct 2025 19:26:36 +0000 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Arch Linux