I noticed that openssl(1) says that various things have been superseded by genpkey, so I tried changing my scripts to use it. It works fine for RSA, but the man page is not very helpful on EC. I tried openssl genpkey -out key.new -algorithm EC -pkeyopt ec_paramgen_curve:secp384r1 and got parameter setting error 139638314907280:error:06089094:digital envelope routines:EVP_PKEY_CTX_ctrl:invalid operation:pmeth_lib.c:404: The curve works with ecparam and also shows up here: openssl ecparam -list_curves secp112r1 : SECG/WTLS curve over a 112 bit prime field secp112r2 : SECG curve over a 112 bit prime field secp128r1 : SECG curve over a 128 bit prime field secp128r2 : SECG curve over a 128 bit prime field secp160k1 : SECG curve over a 160 bit prime field secp160r1 : SECG curve over a 160 bit prime field secp160r2 : SECG/WTLS curve over a 160 bit prime field secp192k1 : SECG curve over a 192 bit prime field secp224k1 : SECG curve over a 224 bit prime field secp224r1 : NIST/SECG curve over a 224 bit prime field secp256k1 : SECG curve over a 256 bit prime field secp384r1 : NIST/SECG curve over a 384 bit prime field secp521r1 : NIST/SECG curve over a 521 bit prime field prime192v1: NIST/X9.62/SECG curve over a 192 bit prime field prime192v2: X9.62 curve over a 192 bit prime field prime192v3: X9.62 curve over a 192 bit prime field prime239v1: X9.62 curve over a 239 bit prime field prime239v2: X9.62 curve over a 239 bit prime field prime239v3: X9.62 curve over a 239 bit prime field prime256v1: X9.62/SECG curve over a 256 bit prime field wap-wsg-idm-ecid-wtls6: SECG/WTLS curve over a 112 bit prime field wap-wsg-idm-ecid-wtls7: SECG/WTLS curve over a 160 bit prime field wap-wsg-idm-ecid-wtls8: WTLS curve over a 112 bit prime field wap-wsg-idm-ecid-wtls9: WTLS curve over a 160 bit prime field wap-wsg-idm-ecid-wtls12: WTLS curvs over a 224 bit prime field Any ideas on what I am doing wrong?