On largish files, on a CentOS 5, 64 bit arch, openssl seems to work fine here [herrold at centos-5 SRPMS]$ time openssl bf -in \ freeswitch-0.0.20100729.git-1.src.rpm -out \ freeswitch-0.0.20100729.git-1.src.rpm.bf enter bf-cbc encryption password: Verifying - enter bf-cbc encryption password: real 0m38.587s user 0m3.700s sys 0m0.568s [herrold at centos-5 SRPMS]$ time openssl bf -d -in \ freeswitch-0.0.20100729.git-1.src.rpm.bf -out \ new_freeswitch-0.0.20100729.git-1.src.rpm enter bf-cbc decryption password: real 0m39.543s user 0m3.652s sys 0m0.792s [herrold at centos-5 SRPMS]$ md5sum freeswitch-0.0.20100729.git-1.src.rpm \ new_freeswitch-0.0.20100729.git-1.src.rpm b33eed78ec8fbccb7ef632c0c4bfe8ac freeswitch-0.0.20100729.git-1.src.rpm b33eed78ec8fbccb7ef632c0c4bfe8ac new_freeswitch-0.0.20100729.git-1.src.rpm [herrold at centos-5 SRPMS]$ ls -alh freeswitch-0.0.20100729.git-1.src.rpm \ new_freeswitch-0.0.20100729.git-1.src.rpm -rw-r--r-- 1 herrold herrold 320M Jul 29 11:00 freeswitch-0.0.20100729.git-1.src.rpm -rw-rw-r-- 1 herrold herrold 320M Jul 29 12:33 new_freeswitch-0.0.20100729.git-1.src.rpm [herrold at centos-5 SRPMS]$ As such perhaps you are overrunning a pipe, or have a problem elsewhere in the process -- Russ herrold