Persistant Node Peer ID: Error: Service(Network(Key decoding error: Ed25519 secret key))

[mswezey23]

When starting a node; passing in --key-node-file <PATH/TO/FILE>, the node fails to start.

This is the error message:
Error: Service(Network(Key decoding error: Ed25519 secret key))

I would expect the output of generating a node key file to be ready to consume for the node.
Documentation, that I've found so far, is vague on how to handle this.

[mswezey23]

Workaround:
--node-key="$(< '$PEER_KEY')"

Where $PEER_KEY == path to to file

[wilwade]

We had this issue and it turned out that it was that we had a line break at the end of the file.

• Wrong: echo "key" > node_key_file
• Correct: echo -n "key" > node_key_file

(Or just make sure you don't use an editor that is adding in the new line on save like I was...)