1GPGSM(1) GNU Privacy Guard 2.2 GPGSM(1)
2
6 gpgsm - CMS encryption and signing tool
7
9 gpgsm [--homedir dir] [--options file] [options] command [args]
10
14 gpgsm is a tool similar to gpg to provide digital encryption and sign‐
15 ing services on X.509 certificates and the CMS protocol. It is mainly
16 used as a backend for S/MIME mail processing. gpgsm includes a full
17 featured certificate management and complies with all rules defined for
18 the German Sphinx project.
19
25 Commands are not distinguished from options except for the fact that
26 only one command is allowed.
27 Commands not specific to the function
33 --version
37 Print the program version and licensing information. Note that
38 you cannot abbreviate this command.
39 --help, -h
42 Print a usage message summarizing the most useful command-line
43 options. Note that you cannot abbreviate this command.
44 --warranty
47 Print warranty information. Note that you cannot abbreviate
48 this command.
49 --dump-options
52 Print a list of all available options and commands. Note that
53 you cannot abbreviate this command.
54 Commands to select the type of operation
56 --encrypt
60 Perform an encryption. The keys the data is encrypted to must
61 be set using the option --recipient.
62 --decrypt
65 Perform a decryption; the type of input is automatically deter‐
66 mined. It may either be in binary form or PEM encoded; auto‐
67 matic determination of base-64 encoding is not done.
68 --sign Create a digital signature. The key used is either the fist one
71 found in the keybox or those set with the --local-user option.
72 --verify
75 Check a signature file for validity. Depending on the arguments
76 a detached signature may also be checked.
77 --server
80 Run in server mode and wait for commands on the stdin.
81 --call-dirmngr command [args]
84 Behave as a Dirmngr client issuing the request command with the
85 optional list of args. The output of the Dirmngr is printed
86 stdout. Please note that file names given as arguments should
87 have an absolute file name (i.e. commencing with /) because they
88 are passed verbatim to the Dirmngr and the working directory of
89 the Dirmngr might not be the same as the one of this client.
90 Currently it is not possible to pass data via stdin to the Dirm‐
91 ngr. command should not contain spaces.
92 This is command is required for certain maintaining tasks of the
94 dirmngr where a dirmngr must be able to call back to gpgsm. See
95 the Dirmngr manual for details.
96 --call-protect-tool arguments
99 Certain maintenance operations are done by an external program
100 call gpg-protect-tool; this is usually not installed in a direc‐
101 tory listed in the PATH variable. This command provides a sim‐
102 ple wrapper to access this tool. arguments are passed verbatim
103 to this command; use ‘--help’ to get a list of supported opera‐
104 tions.
105 How to manage the certificates and keys
109 --generate-key
113 --gen-key
114 This command allows the creation of a certificate signing re‐
115 quest or a self-signed certificate. It is commonly used along
116 with the --output option to save the created CSR or certificate
117 into a file. If used with the --batch a parameter file is used
118 to create the CSR or certificate and it is further possible to
119 create non-self-signed certificates.
120 --list-keys
123 -k List all available certificates stored in the local key data‐
124 base. Note that the displayed data might be reformatted for
125 better human readability and illegal characters are replaced by
126 safe substitutes.
127 --list-secret-keys
130 -K List all available certificates for which a corresponding a se‐
131 cret key is available.
132 --list-external-keys pattern
135 List certificates matching pattern using an external server.
136 This utilizes the dirmngr service.
137 --list-chain
140 Same as --list-keys but also prints all keys making up the
141 chain.
142 --dump-cert
146 --dump-keys
147 List all available certificates stored in the local key database
148 using a format useful mainly for debugging.
149 --dump-chain
152 Same as --dump-keys but also prints all keys making up the
153 chain.
154 --dump-secret-keys
157 List all available certificates for which a corresponding a se‐
158 cret key is available using a format useful mainly for debug‐
159 ging.
160 --dump-external-keys pattern
163 List certificates matching pattern using an external server.
164 This utilizes the dirmngr service. It uses a format useful
165 mainly for debugging.
166 --show-certs [files]
169 This command takes certificate files as input and prints infor‐
170 mation about them in the same format as --dump-cert does. Each
171 file may either contain a single binary certificate or several
172 PEM encoded certificates. If no files are given, the input is
173 taken from stdin.
174 Please note that the listing format may be changed in future re‐
176 leases and that the option --with-colons has currently no ef‐
177 fect.
178 --keydb-clear-some-cert-flags
182 This is a debugging aid to reset certain flags in the key data‐
183 base which are used to cache certain certificate statuses. It
184 is especially useful if a bad CRL or a weird running OCSP re‐
185 sponder did accidentally revoke certificate. There is no secu‐
186 rity issue with this command because gpgsm always make sure that
187 the validity of a certificate is checked right before it is
188 used.
189 --delete-keys pattern
192 Delete the keys matching pattern. Note that there is no command
193 to delete the secret part of the key directly. In case you need
194 to do this, you should run the command gpgsm --dump-secret-keys
195 KEYID before you delete the key, copy the string of hex-digits
196 in the ``keygrip'' line and delete the file consisting of these
197 hex-digits and the suffix .key from the ‘private-keys-v1.d’ di‐
198 rectory below our GnuPG home directory (usually ‘~/.gnupg’).
199 --export [pattern]
202 Export all certificates stored in the Keybox or those specified
203 by the optional pattern. Those pattern consist of a list of user
204 ids (see: [how-to-specify-a-user-id]). When used along with the
205 --armor option a few informational lines are prepended before
206 each block. There is one limitation: As there is no commonly
207 agreed upon way to pack more than one certificate into an ASN.1
208 structure, the binary export (i.e. without using armor) works
209 only for the export of one certificate. Thus it is required to
210 specify a pattern which yields exactly one certificate.
211 Ephemeral certificate are only exported if all pattern are given
212 as fingerprints or keygrips.
213 --export-secret-key-p12 key-id
216 Export the private key and the certificate identified by key-id
217 using the PKCS#12 format. When used with the --armor option a
218 few informational lines are prepended to the output. Note, that
219 the PKCS#12 format is not very secure and proper transport secu‐
220 rity should be used to convey the exported key. (See: [option
221 --p12-charset].)
222 --export-secret-key-p8 key-id
225 --export-secret-key-raw key-id
226 Export the private key of the certificate identified by key-id
227 with any encryption stripped. The ...-raw command exports in
228 PKCS#1 format; the ...-p8 command exports in PKCS#8 format.
229 When used with the --armor option a few informational lines are
230 prepended to the output. These commands are useful to prepare a
231 key for use on a TLS server.
232 --import [files]
235 Import the certificates from the PEM or binary encoded files as
236 well as from signed-only messages. This command may also be
237 used to import a secret key from a PKCS#12 file.
238 --learn-card
241 Read information about the private keys from the smartcard and
242 import the certificates from there. This command utilizes the
243 gpg-agent and in turn the scdaemon.
244 --change-passphrase user_id
247 --passwd user_id
248 Change the passphrase of the private key belonging to the cer‐
249 tificate specified as user_id. Note, that changing the
250 passphrase/PIN of a smartcard is not yet supported.
251
254 GPGSM features a bunch of options to control the exact behaviour and to
255 change the default configuration.
256 How to change the configuration
262 These options are used to change the configuration and are usually
265 found in the option file.
266 --options file
271 Reads configuration from file instead of from the default per-
272 user configuration file. The default configuration file is
273 named ‘gpgsm.conf’ and expected in the ‘.gnupg’ directory di‐
274 rectly below the home directory of the user.
275 --homedir dir
278 Set the name of the home directory to dir. If this option is not
279 used, the home directory defaults to ‘~/.gnupg’. It is only
280 recognized when given on the command line. It also overrides
281 any home directory stated through the environment variable
282 ‘GNUPGHOME’ or (on Windows systems) by means of the Registry en‐
283 try HKCU\Software\GNU\GnuPG:HomeDir.
284 On Windows systems it is possible to install GnuPG as a portable
286 application. In this case only this command line option is con‐
287 sidered, all other ways to set a home directory are ignored.
288 To install GnuPG as a portable application under Windows, create
290 an empty file named ‘gpgconf.ctl’ in the same directory as the
291 tool ‘gpgconf.exe’. The root of the installation is then that
292 directory; or, if ‘gpgconf.exe’ has been installed directly be‐
293 low a directory named ‘bin’, its parent directory. You also
294 need to make sure that the following directories exist and are
295 writable: ‘ROOT/home’ for the GnuPG home and
296 ‘ROOT/var/cache/gnupg’ for internal cache files.
297 -v
301 --verbose
303 Outputs additional information while running. You can increase
304 the verbosity by giving several verbose commands to gpgsm, such
305 as ‘-vv’.
306 --ldapserver string
309 --keyserver string
310 Add an LDAP server to use for X.509 certificate and CRL lookup.
311 This option can be given multiple times to configure more than
312 one LDAP server. Note that in general dirmngr should be config‐
313 ured with the list of LDAP servers; if this option is also con‐
314 figured here, it is used in addition to those configured in
315 dirmngr. For the syntax see the description of dirmngr's
316 ldapserver option.
317 --policy-file filename
320 Change the default name of the policy file to filename. The de‐
321 fault name is ‘policies.txt’.
322 --agent-program file
325 Specify an agent program to be used for secret key operations.
326 The default value is determined by running the command gpgconf.
327 Note that the pipe symbol (|) is used for a regression test
328 suite hack and may thus not be used in the file name.
329 --dirmngr-program file
332 Specify a dirmngr program to be used for CRL checks. The de‐
333 fault value is ‘/usr/bin/dirmngr’.
334 --prefer-system-dirmngr
337 This option is obsolete and ignored.
338 --disable-dirmngr
341 Entirely disable the use of the Dirmngr.
342 --no-autostart
345 Do not start the gpg-agent or the dirmngr if it has not yet been
346 started and its service is required. This option is mostly use‐
347 ful on machines where the connection to gpg-agent has been redi‐
348 rected to another machines. If dirmngr is required on the re‐
349 mote machine, it may be started manually using gpgconf --launch
350 dirmngr.
351 --no-secmem-warning
354 Do not print a warning when the so called "secure memory" cannot
355 be used.
356 --log-file file
359 When running in server mode, append all logging output to file.
360 Use ‘socket://’ to log to socket.
361 Certificate related options
364 --enable-policy-checks
369 --disable-policy-checks
370 By default policy checks are enabled. These options may be used
371 to change it.
372 --enable-crl-checks
375 --disable-crl-checks
376 By default the CRL checks are enabled and the DirMngr is used to
377 check for revoked certificates. The disable option is most use‐
378 ful with an off-line network connection to suppress this check
379 and also to avoid that new certificates introduce a web bug by
380 including a certificate specific CRL DP. The disable option
381 also disables an issuer certificate lookup via the authorityIn‐
382 foAccess property of the certificate; the --enable-issuer-key-
383 retrieve can be used to make use of that property anyway.
384 --enable-trusted-cert-crl-check
387 --disable-trusted-cert-crl-check
388 By default the CRL for trusted root certificates are checked
389 like for any other certificates. This allows a CA to revoke its
390 own certificates voluntary without the need of putting all ever
391 issued certificates into a CRL. The disable option may be used
392 to switch this extra check off. Due to the caching done by the
393 Dirmngr, there will not be any noticeable performance gain.
394 Note, that this also disables possible OCSP checks for trusted
395 root certificates. A more specific way of disabling this check
396 is by adding the ``relax'' keyword to the root CA line of the
397 ‘trustlist.txt’
398 --force-crl-refresh
402 Tell the dirmngr to reload the CRL for each request. For better
403 performance, the dirmngr will actually optimize this by sup‐
404 pressing the loading for short time intervals (e.g. 30 minutes).
405 This option is useful to make sure that a fresh CRL is available
406 for certificates hold in the keybox. The suggested way of doing
407 this is by using it along with the option --with-validation for
408 a key listing command. This option should not be used in a con‐
409 figuration file.
410 --enable-issuer-based-crl-check
413 Run a CRL check even for certificates which do not have any CRL
414 distribution point. This requires that a suitable LDAP server
415 has been configured in Dirmngr and that the CRL can be found us‐
416 ing the issuer. This option reverts to what GnuPG did up to
417 version 2.2.20. This option is in general not useful.
418 --enable-ocsp
421 --disable-ocsp
422 By default OCSP checks are disabled. The enable option may be
423 used to enable OCSP checks via Dirmngr. If CRL checks are also
424 enabled, CRLs will be used as a fallback if for some reason an
425 OCSP request will not succeed. Note, that you have to allow
426 OCSP requests in Dirmngr's configuration too (option --allow-
427 ocsp) and configure Dirmngr properly. If you do not do so you
428 will get the error code ‘Not supported’.
429 --auto-issuer-key-retrieve
432 If a required certificate is missing while validating the chain
433 of certificates, try to load that certificate from an external
434 location. This usually means that Dirmngr is employed to search
435 for the certificate. Note that this option makes a "web bug"
436 like behavior possible. LDAP server operators can see which
437 keys you request, so by sending you a message signed by a brand
438 new key (which you naturally will not have on your local key‐
439 box), the operator can tell both your IP address and the time
440 when you verified the signature.
441 --validation-model name
446 This option changes the default validation model. The only pos‐
447 sible values are "shell" (which is the default), "chain" which
448 forces the use of the chain model and "steed" for a new simpli‐
449 fied model. The chain model is also used if an option in the
450 ‘trustlist.txt’ or an attribute of the certificate requests it.
451 However the standard model (shell) is in that case always tried
452 first.
453 --ignore-cert-extension oid
456 Add oid to the list of ignored certificate extensions. The oid
457 is expected to be in dotted decimal form, like 2.5.29.3. This
458 option may be used more than once. Critical flagged certificate
459 extensions matching one of the OIDs in the list are treated as
460 if they are actually handled and thus the certificate will not
461 be rejected due to an unknown critical extension. Use this op‐
462 tion with care because extensions are usually flagged as criti‐
463 cal for a reason.
464 Input and Output
467 --armor
471 -a Create PEM encoded output. Default is binary output.
472 --base64
475 Create Base-64 encoded output; i.e. PEM without the header
476 lines.
477 --assume-armor
480 Assume the input data is PEM encoded. Default is to autodetect
481 the encoding but this is may fail.
482 --assume-base64
485 Assume the input data is plain base-64 encoded.
486 --assume-binary
489 Assume the input data is binary encoded.
490 --p12-charset name
494 gpgsm uses the UTF-8 encoding when encoding passphrases for
495 PKCS#12 files. This option may be used to force the passphrase
496 to be encoded in the specified encoding name. This is useful if
497 the application used to import the key uses a different encoding
498 and thus will not be able to import a file generated by gpgsm.
499 Commonly used values for name are Latin1 and CP850. Note that
500 gpgsm itself automagically imports any file with a passphrase
501 encoded to the most commonly used encodings.
502 --default-key user_id
506 Use user_id as the standard key for signing. This key is used
507 if no other key has been defined as a signing key. Note, that
508 the first --local-users option also sets this key if it has not
509 yet been set; however --default-key always overrides this.
510 --local-user user_id
514 -u user_id
516 Set the user(s) to be used for signing. The default is the
517 first secret key found in the database.
518 --recipient name
522 -r Encrypt to the user id name. There are several ways a user id
523 may be given (see: [how-to-specify-a-user-id]).
524 --output file
528 -o file
529 Write output to file. The default is to write it to stdout.
530 --with-key-data
535 Displays extra information with the --list-keys commands. Espe‐
536 cially a line tagged grp is printed which tells you the keygrip
537 of a key. This string is for example used as the file name of
538 the secret key. Implies --with-colons.
539 --with-validation
543 When doing a key listing, do a full validation check for each
544 key and print the result. This is usually a slow operation be‐
545 cause it requires a CRL lookup and other operations.
546 When used along with --import, a validation of the certificate
548 to import is done and only imported if it succeeds the test.
549 Note that this does not affect an already available certificate
550 in the DB. This option is therefore useful to simply verify a
551 certificate.
552 --with-md5-fingerprint
556 For standard key listings, also print the MD5 fingerprint of the
557 certificate.
558 --with-keygrip
561 Include the keygrip in standard key listings. Note that the
562 keygrip is always listed in --with-colons mode.
563 --with-secret
566 Include info about the presence of a secret key in public key
567 listings done with --with-colons.
568 How to change how the CMS is created
571 --include-certs n
575 Using n of -2 includes all certificate except for the root cert,
576 -1 includes all certs, 0 does not include any certs, 1 includes
577 only the signers cert and all other positive values include up
578 to n certificates starting with the signer cert. The default is
579 -2.
580 --cipher-algo oid
583 Use the cipher algorithm with the ASN.1 object identifier oid
584 for encryption. For convenience the strings 3DES, AES and
585 AES256 may be used instead of their OIDs. The default is AES
586 (2.16.840.1.101.3.4.1.2).
587 --digest-algo name
590 Use name as the message digest algorithm. Usually this algo‐
591 rithm is deduced from the respective signing certificate. This
592 option forces the use of the given algorithm and may lead to se‐
593 vere interoperability problems.
594 Doing things one usually do not want to do
597 --chuid uid
603 Change the current user to uid which may either be a number or a
604 name. This can be used from the root account to run gpgsm for
605 another user. If uid is not the current UID a standard PATH is
606 set and the envvar GNUPGHOME is unset. To override the latter
607 the option --homedir can be used. This option has only an ef‐
608 fect when used on the command line. This option has currently
609 no effect at all on Windows.
610 --extra-digest-algo name
614 Sometimes signatures are broken in that they announce a differ‐
615 ent digest algorithm than actually used. gpgsm uses a one-pass
616 data processing model and thus needs to rely on the announced
617 digest algorithms to properly hash the data. As a workaround
618 this option may be used to tell gpgsm to also hash the data us‐
619 ing the algorithm name; this slows processing down a little bit
620 but allows verification of such broken signatures. If gpgsm
621 prints an error like ``digest algo 8 has not been enabled'' you
622 may want to try this option, with ‘SHA256’ for name.
623 --faked-system-time epoch
627 This option is only useful for testing; it sets the system time
628 back or forth to epoch which is the number of seconds elapsed
629 since the year 1970. Alternatively epoch may be given as a full
630 ISO time string (e.g. "20070924T154812").
631 --with-ephemeral-keys
634 Include ephemeral flagged keys in the output of key listings.
635 Note that they are included anyway if the key specification for
636 a listing is given as fingerprint or keygrip.
637 --debug-level level
640 Select the debug level for investigating problems. level may be
641 a numeric value or by a keyword:
642 none No debugging at all. A value of less than 1 may be used
645 instead of the keyword.
646 basic Some basic debug messages. A value between 1 and 2 may
648 be used instead of the keyword.
649 advanced
651 More verbose debug messages. A value between 3 and 5 may
652 be used instead of the keyword.
653 expert Even more detailed messages. A value between 6 and 8 may
655 be used instead of the keyword.
656 guru All of the debug messages you can get. A value greater
658 than 8 may be used instead of the keyword. The creation
659 of hash tracing files is only enabled if the keyword is
660 used.
661 How these messages are mapped to the actual debugging flags is not
663 specified and may change with newer releases of this program. They are
664 however carefully selected to best aid in debugging.
665 --debug flags
668 Set debug flags. All flags are or-ed and flags may be given in
669 C syntax (e.g. 0x0042) or as a comma separated list of flag
670 names. To get a list of all supported flags the single word
671 "help" can be used. This option is only useful for debugging and
672 the behavior may change at any time without notice.
673 Note, that all flags set using this option may get overridden by
675 --debug-level.
676 --debug-all
679 Same as --debug=0xffffffff
680 --debug-allow-core-dump
683 Usually gpgsm tries to avoid dumping core by well written code
684 and by disabling core dumps for security reasons. However, bugs
685 are pretty durable beasts and to squash them it is sometimes
686 useful to have a core dump. This option enables core dumps un‐
687 less the Bad Thing happened before the option parsing.
688 --debug-no-chain-validation
691 This is actually not a debugging option but only useful as such.
692 It lets gpgsm bypass all certificate chain validation checks.
693 --debug-ignore-expiration
696 This is actually not a debugging option but only useful as such.
697 It lets gpgsm ignore all notAfter dates, this is used by the re‐
698 gression tests.
699 --passphrase-fd n
702 Read the passphrase from file descriptor n. Only the first line
703 will be read from file descriptor n. If you use 0 for n, the
704 passphrase will be read from STDIN. This can only be used if
705 only one passphrase is supplied.
706 Note that this passphrase is only used if the option --batch has
708 also been given.
709 --pinentry-mode mode
712 Set the pinentry mode to mode. Allowed values for mode are:
713 default
715 Use the default of the agent, which is ask.
716 ask Force the use of the Pinentry.
718 cancel Emulate use of Pinentry's cancel button.
720 error Return a Pinentry error (``No Pinentry'').
722 loopback
724 Redirect Pinentry queries to the caller. Note that in
725 contrast to Pinentry the user is not prompted again if he
726 enters a bad password.
727 --request-origin origin
730 Tell gpgsm to assume that the operation ultimately originated at
731 origin. Depending on the origin certain restrictions are ap‐
732 plied and the Pinentry may include an extra note on the origin.
733 Supported values for origin are: local which is the default, re‐
734 mote to indicate a remote origin or browser for an operation re‐
735 quested by a web browser.
736 --no-common-certs-import
739 Suppress the import of common certificates on keybox creation.
740 All the long options may also be given in the configuration file after
743 stripping off the two leading dashes.
744
748 There are different ways to specify a user ID to GnuPG. Some of them
749 are only valid for gpg others are only good for gpgsm. Here is the en‐
750 tire list of ways to specify a key:
751 By key Id.
755 This format is deduced from the length of the string and its
756 content or 0x prefix. The key Id of an X.509 certificate are the
757 low 64 bits of its SHA-1 fingerprint. The use of key Ids is
758 just a shortcut, for all automated processing the fingerprint
759 should be used.
760 When using gpg an exclamation mark (!) may be appended to force
762 using the specified primary or secondary key and not to try and
763 calculate which primary or secondary key to use.
764 The last four lines of the example give the key ID in their long
766 form as internally used by the OpenPGP protocol. You can see the
767 long key ID using the option --with-colons.
768 234567C4
770 0F34E556E
771 01347A56A
772 0xAB123456
773 234AABBCC34567C4
775 0F323456784E56EAB
776 01AB3FED1347A5612
777 0x234AABBCC34567C4
778 By fingerprint.
783 This format is deduced from the length of the string and its
784 content or the 0x prefix. Note, that only the 20 byte version
785 fingerprint is available with gpgsm (i.e. the SHA-1 hash of the
786 certificate).
787 When using gpg an exclamation mark (!) may be appended to force
789 using the specified primary or secondary key and not to try and
790 calculate which primary or secondary key to use.
791 The best way to specify a key Id is by using the fingerprint.
793 This avoids any ambiguities in case that there are duplicated
794 key IDs.
795 1234343434343434C434343434343434
797 123434343434343C3434343434343734349A3434
798 0E12343434343434343434EAB3484343434343434
799 0xE12343434343434343434EAB3484343434343434
800 gpgsm also accepts colons between each pair of hexadecimal digits be‐
803 cause this is the de-facto standard on how to present X.509 finger‐
804 prints. gpg also allows the use of the space separated SHA-1 finger‐
805 print as printed by the key listing commands.
806 By exact match on OpenPGP user ID.
809 This is denoted by a leading equal sign. It does not make sense
810 for X.509 certificates.
811 =Heinrich Heine <heinrichh@uni-duesseldorf.de>
813 By exact match on an email address.
816 This is indicated by enclosing the email address in the usual
817 way with left and right angles.
818 <heinrichh@uni-duesseldorf.de>
820 By partial match on an email address.
824 This is indicated by prefixing the search string with an @.
825 This uses a substring search but considers only the mail address
826 (i.e. inside the angle brackets).
827 @heinrichh
829 By exact match on the subject's DN.
832 This is indicated by a leading slash, directly followed by the
833 RFC-2253 encoded DN of the subject. Note that you can't use the
834 string printed by gpgsm --list-keys because that one has been
835 reordered and modified for better readability; use --with-colons
836 to print the raw (but standard escaped) RFC-2253 string.
837 /CN=Heinrich Heine,O=Poets,L=Paris,C=FR
839 By exact match on the issuer's DN.
842 This is indicated by a leading hash mark, directly followed by a
843 slash and then directly followed by the RFC-2253 encoded DN of
844 the issuer. This should return the Root cert of the issuer.
845 See note above.
846 #/CN=Root Cert,O=Poets,L=Paris,C=FR
848 By exact match on serial number and issuer's DN.
852 This is indicated by a hash mark, followed by the hexadecimal
853 representation of the serial number, then followed by a slash
854 and the RFC-2253 encoded DN of the issuer. See note above.
855 #4F03/CN=Root Cert,O=Poets,L=Paris,C=FR
857 By keygrip.
860 This is indicated by an ampersand followed by the 40 hex digits
861 of a keygrip. gpgsm prints the keygrip when using the command
862 --dump-cert.
863 &D75F22C3F86E355877348498CDC92BD21010A480
865 By substring match.
869 This is the default mode but applications may want to explicitly
870 indicate this by putting the asterisk in front. Match is not
871 case sensitive.
872 Heine
874 *Heine
875 . and + prefixes
878 These prefixes are reserved for looking up mails anchored at the
879 end and for a word search mode. They are not yet implemented
880 and using them is undefined.
881 Please note that we have reused the hash mark identifier which
884 was used in old GnuPG versions to indicate the so called local-
885 id. It is not anymore used and there should be no conflict when
886 used with X.509 stuff.
887 Using the RFC-2253 format of DNs has the drawback that it is not
889 possible to map them back to the original encoding, however we
890 don't have to do this because our key database stores this en‐
891 coding as meta data.
892
896 $ gpgsm -er goo@bar.net <plaintext >ciphertext
897
902 There are a few configuration files to control certain aspects of
903 gpgsm's operation. Unless noted, they are expected in the current home
904 directory (see: [option --homedir]).
905 gpgsm.conf
909 This is the standard configuration file read by gpgsm on
910 startup. It may contain any valid long option; the leading two
911 dashes may not be entered and the option may not be abbreviated.
912 This default name may be changed on the command line (see:
913 [gpgsm-option --options]). You should backup this file.
914 common.conf
917 This is an optional configuration file read by gpgsm on startup.
918 It may contain options pertaining to all components of GnuPG.
919 Its current main use is for the "use-keyboxd" option.
920 policies.txt
923 This is a list of allowed CA policies. This file should list
924 the object identifiers of the policies line by line. Empty
925 lines and lines starting with a hash mark are ignored. Policies
926 missing in this file and not marked as critical in the certifi‐
927 cate will print only a warning; certificates with policies
928 marked as critical and not listed in this file will fail the
929 signature verification. You should backup this file.
930 For example, to allow only the policy 2.289.9.9, the file should
932 look like this:
933 # Allowed policies
935 2.289.9.9
936 qualified.txt
939 This is the list of root certificates used for qualified cer‐
940 tificates. They are defined as certificates capable of creating
941 legally binding signatures in the same way as handwritten signa‐
942 tures are. Comments start with a hash mark and empty lines are
943 ignored. Lines do have a length limit but this is not a serious
944 limitation as the format of the entries is fixed and checked by
945 gpgsm: A non-comment line starts with optional whitespace, fol‐
946 lowed by exactly 40 hex characters, white space and a lowercased
947 2 letter country code. Additional data delimited with by a
948 white space is current ignored but might late be used for other
949 purposes.
950 Note that even if a certificate is listed in this file, this
952 does not mean that the certificate is trusted; in general the
953 certificates listed in this file need to be listed also in
954 ‘trustlist.txt’. This is a global file an installed in the
955 sysconf directory (e.g. ‘/etc/gnupg/qualified.txt’).
956 Every time gpgsm uses a certificate for signing or verification
958 this file will be consulted to check whether the certificate un‐
959 der question has ultimately been issued by one of these CAs. If
960 this is the case the user will be informed that the verified
961 signature represents a legally binding (``qualified'') signa‐
962 ture. When creating a signature using such a certificate an ex‐
963 tra prompt will be issued to let the user confirm that such a
964 legally binding signature shall really be created.
965 Because this software has not yet been approved for use with
967 such certificates, appropriate notices will be shown to indicate
968 this fact.
969 help.txt
972 This is plain text file with a few help entries used with pinen‐
973 try as well as a large list of help items for gpg and gpgsm.
974 The standard file has English help texts; to install localized
975 versions use filenames like ‘help.LL.txt’ with LL denoting the
976 locale. GnuPG comes with a set of predefined help files in the
977 data directory (e.g. ‘/usr/share/gnupg/gnupg/help.de.txt’) and
978 allows overriding of any help item by help files stored in the
979 system configuration directory (e.g. ‘/etc/gnupg/help.de.txt’).
980 For a reference of the help file's syntax, please see the in‐
981 stalled ‘help.txt’ file.
982 com-certs.pem
986 This file is a collection of common certificates used to popu‐
987 lated a newly created ‘pubring.kbx’. An administrator may re‐
988 place this file with a custom one. The format is a concatena‐
989 tion of PEM encoded X.509 certificates. This global file is in‐
990 stalled in the data directory (e.g. ‘/usr/share/gnupg/com-
991 certs.pem’).
992 Note that on larger installations, it is useful to put predefined files
995 into the directory ‘/etc/skel/.gnupg/’ so that newly created users
996 start up with a working configuration. For existing users a small
997 helper script is provided to create these files (see: [addgnupghome]).
998 For internal purposes gpgsm creates and maintains a few other files;
1000 they all live in the current home directory (see: [option --homedir]).
1001 Only gpgsm may modify these files.
1002 pubring.kbx
1006 This a database file storing the certificates as well as meta
1007 information. For debugging purposes the tool kbxutil may be
1008 used to show the internal structure of this file. You should
1009 backup this file.
1010 random_seed
1013 This content of this file is used to maintain the internal state
1014 of the random number generator across invocations. The same
1015 file is used by other programs of this software too.
1016 S.gpg-agent
1019 If this file exists gpgsm will first try to connect to this
1020 socket for accessing gpg-agent before starting a new gpg-agent
1021 instance. Under Windows this socket (which in reality be a
1022 plain file describing a regular TCP listening port) is the stan‐
1023 dard way of connecting the gpg-agent.
1024
1027 gpg2(1), gpg-agent(1)
1028 The full documentation for this tool is maintained as a Texinfo manual.
1030 If GnuPG and the info program are properly installed at your site, the
1031 command
1032 info gnupg
1034 should give you access to the complete manual including a menu struc‐
1036 ture and an index.
1037GnuPG 2.3.3 2021-10-06 GPGSM(1)