Fedora Users — openssl -passout problem?

I am trying to use openssl to create a password protected
key in openvpn, but not succeeding.  I am not sure I am
doing it correctly.

With:

# openssl version
OpenSSL 0.9.8b 04 May 2006

# uname -a
Linux mbrc32 2.6.22.1-41.fc7 #1 SMP Fri Jul 27 18:10:34 EDT 2007
   i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux

# echo $vpnFullPassFile
/root/code/keygen/vpn_targ/passVPNfull.txt

from:

# openssl req -days 3650 -new -keyout $1.key -out $1.csr
   -config $KEY_CONFIG -passout file:$vpnFullPassFile

I get:

file /root/code/keygen/vpn_targ/passVPNfull.txt is not present

but:

# ll /root/code/keygen/vpn_targ/passVPNfull.txt
-r-------- 1 root root 36 2008-02-11 11:43
   /root/code/keygen/vpn_targ/passVPNfull.txt

Thanks for your help.
Mike.