I have been using stunnel previous versions just fine. It didn't apparently have the feature of a certificate in SSL server mode. That's alright but not necessary for us as we're simply running a localhost server to tunnel to the remote server.

Anyway, I have read the FAQ tutorial and such related to this and tried everything. No mater what I do with the cert or key settings it still gives this same error here's the complete output....

No limit detected for the number of clients
stunnel 4.53 on x86-pc-mingw32-gnu platform
Compiled/running with OpenSSL 0.9.8s-fips 4 Jan 2012
Threading:WIN32 SSL:+ENGINE+OCSP+FIPS Auth:none Sockets:SELECT+IPv6
Reading configuration from file stunnel.conf
FIPS mode is enabled
Compression not enabled
Snagged 64 random bytes from C:/.rnd
Wrote 0 new random bytes to C:/.rnd
PRNG seeded successfully
Initializing service section [FIX]
Section FIX: SSL server needs a certificate

Server is down

And here is the stunnel.conf file contents:

; Certificate/key is needed in server mode and optional in client mode
cert = stunnel.pem
;key = stunnel.pem

; Disable support for insecure SSLv2 protocol
options = NO_SSLv2

[FIX]
accept  = 127.0.0.1:5679
connect = 216.52.236.112:5680
TIMEOUTconnect = 5

[FIXLIVE]
accept  = 127.0.0.1:5680
connect = 216.52.236.185:51581
TIMEOUTconnect = 5

Please not that stunnel came installed with an stunnel.pem file. I tried uncommenting the config line for the key. Also regenerated the key using openssh per instructions.

I tried using absolute path to the cert file.

Nothing makes any difference. Is this a defect in stunnel? Or am I doing something wrong?