[chef] bootstrapping error - empty client.pem?

[Maven User < >]

Hi all -

I'm struggling a bit here...

I have all the debugging turned up and I'm trying to bootstrap a new node and I keep getting this error:

[2012-07-20T11:39:43-07:00] INFO: *** Chef 10.12.0 ***

[2012-07-20T11:39:43-07:00] INFO: Client key /etc/chef/client.pem is not present - registering

[2012-07-20T11:39:43-07:00] FATAL: Stacktrace dumped to /var/chef/cache/chef-stacktrace.out

[2012-07-20T11:39:43-07:00] FATAL: Chef::Exceptions::InvalidPrivateKey: The file /etc/chef/validation.pem does not contain a correctly formatted private key.

The key file should begin with '-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----' and end with '-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----'

Looking at the validation.pem file on this particular machine AND one that bootstraps properly there's no difference.  The client.pem file simply isn't getting generated on the one complaining about the validation.pem file.  

Any suggesitons?