1GPG-AGENT(1) GNU Privacy Guard 2.3 GPG-AGENT(1)
2
6 gpg-agent - Secret key management for GnuPG
7
9 gpg-agent [--homedir dir] [--options file] [options]
10 gpg-agent [--homedir dir] [--options file] [options] --server
11 gpg-agent [--homedir dir] [--options file] [options] --daemon [com‐
12 mand_line]
13
16 gpg-agent is a daemon to manage secret (private) keys independently
17 from any protocol. It is used as a backend for gpg and gpgsm as well
18 as for a couple of other utilities.
19 The agent is automatically started on demand by gpg, gpgsm, gpgconf, or
21 gpg-connect-agent. Thus there is no reason to start it manually. In
22 case you want to use the included Secure Shell Agent you may start the
23 agent using:
24 gpg-connect-agent /bye
27 If you want to manually terminate the currently-running agent, you can
30 safely do so with:
31 gpgconf --kill gpg-agent
33 You should always add the following lines to your .bashrc or whatever
36 initialization file is used for all shell invocations:
37 GPG_TTY=$(tty)
39 export GPG_TTY
40 It is important that this environment variable always reflects the out‐
43 put of the tty command. For W32 systems this option is not required.
44 Please make sure that a proper pinentry program has been installed un‐
46 der the default filename (which is system dependent) or use the option
47 pinentry-program to specify the full name of that program. It is often
48 useful to install a symbolic link from the actual used pinentry (e.g.
49 ‘/usr/bin/pinentry-gtk’) to the expected one (e.g. ‘/usr/bin/pinen‐
50 try’).
51
56 Commands are not distinguished from options except for the fact that
57 only one command is allowed.
58 --version
61 Print the program version and licensing information. Note that
62 you cannot abbreviate this command.
63 --help
66 -h Print a usage message summarizing the most useful command-line
67 options. Note that you cannot abbreviate this command.
68 --dump-options
71 Print a list of all available options and commands. Note that
72 you cannot abbreviate this command.
73 --server
76 Run in server mode and wait for commands on the stdin. The de‐
77 fault mode is to create a socket and listen for commands there.
78 --daemon [command line]
81 Start the gpg-agent as a daemon; that is, detach it from the
82 console and run it in the background.
83 As an alternative you may create a new process as a child of
85 gpg-agent: gpg-agent --daemon /bin/sh. This way you get a new
86 shell with the environment setup properly; after you exit from
87 this shell, gpg-agent terminates within a few seconds.
88 --supervised
91 Run in the foreground, sending logs by default to stderr, and
92 listening on provided file descriptors, which must already be
93 bound to listening sockets. This option is deprecated and not
94 supported on Windows.
95 In --supervised mode, different file descriptors can be provided
97 for use as different socket types (e.g. ssh, extra) as long as
98 they are identified in the environment variable LISTEN_FDNAMES
99 (see sd_listen_fds(3) on some Linux distributions for more in‐
100 formation on this convention).
101
103 Options may either be used on the command line or, after stripping off
104 the two leading dashes, in the configuration file.
105 --options file
110 Reads configuration from file instead of from the default per-
111 user configuration file. The default configuration file is
112 named ‘gpg-agent.conf’ and expected in the ‘.gnupg’ directory
113 directly below the home directory of the user. This option is
114 ignored if used in an options file.
115 --homedir dir
119 Set the name of the home directory to dir. If this option is not
120 used, the home directory defaults to ‘~/.gnupg’. It is only
121 recognized when given on the command line. It also overrides
122 any home directory stated through the environment variable
123 ‘GNUPGHOME’ or (on Windows systems) by means of the Registry en‐
124 try HKCU\Software\GNU\GnuPG:HomeDir.
125 On Windows systems it is possible to install GnuPG as a portable
127 application. In this case only this command line option is con‐
128 sidered, all other ways to set a home directory are ignored.
129 To install GnuPG as a portable application under Windows, create
131 an empty file named ‘gpgconf.ctl’ in the same directory as the
132 tool ‘gpgconf.exe’. The root of the installation is then that
133 directory; or, if ‘gpgconf.exe’ has been installed directly be‐
134 low a directory named ‘bin’, its parent directory. You also
135 need to make sure that the following directories exist and are
136 writable: ‘ROOT/home’ for the GnuPG home and
137 ‘ROOT/var/cache/gnupg’ for internal cache files.
138 -v
142 --verbose
143 Outputs additional information while running. You can increase
144 the verbosity by giving several verbose commands to gpg-agent,
145 such as ‘-vv’.
146 -q
149 --quiet
150 Try to be as quiet as possible.
151 --batch
154 Don't invoke a pinentry or do any other thing requiring human
155 interaction.
156 --faked-system-time epoch
159 This option is only useful for testing; it sets the system time
160 back or forth to epoch which is the number of seconds elapsed
161 since the year 1970.
162 --debug-level level
165 Select the debug level for investigating problems. level may be
166 a numeric value or a keyword:
167 none No debugging at all. A value of less than 1 may be used
170 instead of the keyword.
171 basic Some basic debug messages. A value between 1 and 2 may
173 be used instead of the keyword.
174 advanced
176 More verbose debug messages. A value between 3 and 5 may
177 be used instead of the keyword.
178 expert Even more detailed messages. A value between 6 and 8 may
180 be used instead of the keyword.
181 guru All of the debug messages you can get. A value greater
183 than 8 may be used instead of the keyword. The creation
184 of hash tracing files is only enabled if the keyword is
185 used.
186 How these messages are mapped to the actual debugging flags is not
188 specified and may change with newer releases of this program. They are
189 however carefully selected to best aid in debugging.
190 --debug flags
193 Set debug flags. All flags are or-ed and flags may be given in
194 C syntax (e.g. 0x0042) or as a comma separated list of flag
195 names. To get a list of all supported flags the single word
196 "help" can be used. This option is only useful for debugging and
197 the behavior may change at any time without notice.
198 --debug-all
201 Same as --debug=0xffffffff
202 --debug-wait n
205 When running in server mode, wait n seconds before entering the
206 actual processing loop and print the pid. This gives time to
207 attach a debugger.
208 --debug-quick-random
211 This option inhibits the use of the very secure random quality
212 level (Libgcrypt’s GCRY_VERY_STRONG_RANDOM) and degrades all re‐
213 quest down to standard random quality. It is only used for
214 testing and should not be used for any production quality keys.
215 This option is only effective when given on the command line.
216 On GNU/Linux, another way to quickly generate insecure keys is
218 to use rngd to fill the kernel's entropy pool with lower quality
219 random data. rngd is typically provided by the rng-tools pack‐
220 age. It can be run as follows: ‘sudo rngd -f -r /dev/urandom’.
221 --debug-pinentry
224 This option enables extra debug information pertaining to the
225 Pinentry. As of now it is only useful when used along with
226 --debug 1024.
227 --no-detach
230 Don't detach the process from the console. This is mainly use‐
231 ful for debugging.
232 --steal-socket
235 In --daemon mode, gpg-agent detects an already running gpg-agent
236 and does not allow to start a new instance. This option can be
237 used to override this check: the new gpg-agent process will try
238 to take over the communication sockets from the already running
239 process and start anyway. This option should in general not be
240 used.
241 -s
245 --sh
246 -c
247 --csh Format the info output in daemon mode for use with the standard
248 Bourne shell or the C-shell respectively. The default is to
249 guess it based on the environment variable SHELL which is cor‐
250 rect in almost all cases.
251 --grab
255 --no-grab
256 Tell the pinentry to grab the keyboard and mouse. This option
257 should be used on X-Servers to avoid X-sniffing attacks. Any use
258 of the option --grab overrides an used option --no-grab. The
259 default is --no-grab.
260 --log-file file
264 Append all logging output to file. This is very helpful in see‐
265 ing what the agent actually does. Use ‘socket://’ to log to
266 socket. If neither a log file nor a log file descriptor has
267 been set on a Windows platform, the Registry entry HKCU\Soft‐
268 ware\GNU\GnuPG:DefaultLogFile, if set, is used to specify the
269 logging output.
270 --no-allow-mark-trusted
275 Do not allow clients to mark keys as trusted, i.e. put them into
276 the ‘trustlist.txt’ file. This makes it harder for users to in‐
277 advertently accept Root-CA keys.
278 --no-user-trustlist
283 Entirely ignore the user trust list and consider only the global
284 trustlist (‘/etc/gnupg/trustlist.txt’). This implies the [op‐
285 tion --no-allow-mark-trusted].
286 --sys-trustlist-name file
289 Changes the default name for the global trustlist from
290 "trustlist.txt" to file. If file does not contain any slashes
291 and does not start with "~/" it is searched in the system con‐
292 figuration directory (‘/etc/gnupg’).
293 --allow-preset-passphrase
297 This option allows the use of gpg-preset-passphrase to seed the
298 internal cache of gpg-agent with passphrases.
299 --no-allow-loopback-pinentry
303 --allow-loopback-pinentry
305 Disallow or allow clients to use the loopback pinentry features;
306 see the option pinentry-mode for details. Allow is the default.
307 The --force option of the Assuan command DELETE_KEY is also con‐
309 trolled by this option: The option is ignored if a loopback
310 pinentry is disallowed.
311 --no-allow-external-cache
314 Tell Pinentry not to enable features which use an external cache
315 for passphrases.
316 Some desktop environments prefer to unlock all credentials with
318 one master password and may have installed a Pinentry which em‐
319 ploys an additional external cache to implement such a policy.
320 By using this option the Pinentry is advised not to make use of
321 such a cache and instead always ask the user for the requested
322 passphrase.
323 --allow-emacs-pinentry
326 Tell Pinentry to allow features to divert the passphrase entry
327 to a running Emacs instance. How this is exactly handled de‐
328 pends on the version of the used Pinentry.
329 --ignore-cache-for-signing
332 This option will let gpg-agent bypass the passphrase cache for
333 all signing operation. Note that there is also a per-session
334 option to control this behavior but this command line option
335 takes precedence.
336 --default-cache-ttl n
339 Set the time a cache entry is valid to n seconds. The default
340 is 600 seconds. Each time a cache entry is accessed, the en‐
341 try's timer is reset. To set an entry's maximum lifetime, use
342 max-cache-ttl. Note that a cached passphrase may not be evicted
343 immediately from memory if no client requests a cache operation.
344 This is due to an internal housekeeping function which is only
345 run every few seconds.
346 --default-cache-ttl-ssh n
349 Set the time a cache entry used for SSH keys is valid to n sec‐
350 onds. The default is 1800 seconds. Each time a cache entry is
351 accessed, the entry's timer is reset. To set an entry's maximum
352 lifetime, use max-cache-ttl-ssh.
353 --max-cache-ttl n
356 Set the maximum time a cache entry is valid to n seconds. After
357 this time a cache entry will be expired even if it has been ac‐
358 cessed recently or has been set using gpg-preset-passphrase.
359 The default is 2 hours (7200 seconds).
360 --max-cache-ttl-ssh n
363 Set the maximum time a cache entry used for SSH keys is valid to
364 n seconds. After this time a cache entry will be expired even
365 if it has been accessed recently or has been set using gpg-pre‐
366 set-passphrase. The default is 2 hours (7200 seconds).
367 --enforce-passphrase-constraints
370 Enforce the passphrase constraints by not allowing the user to
371 bypass them using the ``Take it anyway'' button.
372 --min-passphrase-len n
375 Set the minimal length of a passphrase. When entering a new
376 passphrase shorter than this value a warning will be displayed.
377 Defaults to 8.
378 --min-passphrase-nonalpha n
381 Set the minimal number of digits or special characters required
382 in a passphrase. When entering a new passphrase with less than
383 this number of digits or special characters a warning will be
384 displayed. Defaults to 1.
385 --check-passphrase-pattern file
388 --check-sym-passphrase-pattern file
389 Check the passphrase against the pattern given in file. When
390 entering a new passphrase matching one of these pattern a warn‐
391 ing will be displayed. If file does not contain any slashes and
392 does not start with "~/" it is searched in the system configura‐
393 tion directory (‘/etc/gnupg’). The default is not to use any
394 pattern file. The second version of this option is only used
395 when creating a new symmetric key to allow the use of different
396 patterns for such passphrases.
397 Security note: It is known that checking a passphrase against a
399 list of pattern or even against a complete dictionary is not
400 very effective to enforce good passphrases. Users will soon
401 figure up ways to bypass such a policy. A better policy is to
402 educate users on good security behavior and optionally to run a
403 passphrase cracker regularly on all users passphrases to catch
404 the very simple ones.
405 --max-passphrase-days n
408 Ask the user to change the passphrase if n days have passed
409 since the last change. With --enforce-passphrase-constraints
410 set the user may not bypass this check.
411 --enable-passphrase-history
414 This option does nothing yet.
415 --pinentry-invisible-char char
418 This option asks the Pinentry to use char for displaying hidden
419 characters. char must be one character UTF-8 string. A Pinen‐
420 try may or may not honor this request.
421 --pinentry-timeout n
424 This option asks the Pinentry to timeout after n seconds with no
425 user input. The default value of 0 does not ask the pinentry to
426 timeout, however a Pinentry may use its own default timeout
427 value in this case. A Pinentry may or may not honor this re‐
428 quest.
429 --pinentry-formatted-passphrase
432 This option asks the Pinentry to enable passphrase formatting
433 when asking the user for a new passphrase and masking of the
434 passphrase is turned off.
435 If passphrase formatting is enabled, then all non-breaking space
437 characters are stripped from the entered passphrase. Passphrase
438 formatting is mostly useful in combination with passphrases gen‐
439 erated with the GENPIN feature of some Pinentries. Note that
440 such a generated passphrase, if not modified by the user, skips
441 all passphrase constraints checking because such constraints
442 would actually weaken the generated passphrase.
443 --pinentry-program filename
446 Use program filename as the PIN entry. The default is installa‐
447 tion dependent. With the default configuration the name of the
448 default pinentry is ‘pinentry’; if that file does not exist but
449 a ‘pinentry-basic’ exist the latter is used.
450 On a Windows platform the default is to use the first existing
452 program from this list: ‘bin\pinentry.exe’,
453 ‘..\Gpg4win\bin\pinentry.exe’, ‘..\Gpg4win\pinentry.exe’,
454 ‘..\GNU\GnuPG\pinentry.exe’, ‘..\GNU\bin\pinentry.exe’,
455 ‘bin\pinentry-basic.exe’ where the file names are relative to
456 the GnuPG installation directory.
457 --pinentry-touch-file filename
461 By default the filename of the socket gpg-agent is listening for
462 requests is passed to Pinentry, so that it can touch that file
463 before exiting (it does this only in curses mode). This option
464 changes the file passed to Pinentry to filename. The special
465 name /dev/null may be used to completely disable this feature.
466 Note that Pinentry will not create that file, it will only
467 change the modification and access time.
468 --scdaemon-program filename
472 Use program filename as the Smartcard daemon. The default is
473 installation dependent and can be shown with the gpgconf com‐
474 mand.
475 --disable-scdaemon
478 Do not make use of the scdaemon tool. This option has the ef‐
479 fect of disabling the ability to do smartcard operations. Note,
480 that enabling this option at runtime does not kill an already
481 forked scdaemon.
482 --disable-check-own-socket
485 gpg-agent employs a periodic self-test to detect a stolen
486 socket. This usually means a second instance of gpg-agent has
487 taken over the socket and gpg-agent will then terminate itself.
488 This option may be used to disable this self-test for debugging
489 purposes.
490 --use-standard-socket
493 --no-use-standard-socket
494 --use-standard-socket-p
495 Since GnuPG 2.1 the standard socket is always used. These op‐
496 tions have no more effect. The command gpg-agent --use-stan‐
497 dard-socket-p will thus always return success.
498 --display string
501 --ttyname string
502 --ttytype string
503 --lc-ctype string
504 --lc-messages string
505 --xauthority string
506 These options are used with the server mode to pass localization
507 information.
508 --keep-tty
511 --keep-display
512 Ignore requests to change the current tty or X window system's
513 DISPLAY variable respectively. This is useful to lock the
514 pinentry to pop up at the tty or display you started the agent.
515 --listen-backlog n
518 Set the size of the queue for pending connections. The default
519 is 64.
520 --extra-socket name
524 The extra socket is created by default, you may use this option
525 to change the name of the socket. To disable the creation of
526 the socket use ``none'' or ``/dev/null'' for name.
527 Also listen on native gpg-agent connections on the given socket.
529 The intended use for this extra socket is to setup a Unix domain
530 socket forwarding from a remote machine to this socket on the
531 local machine. A gpg running on the remote machine may then
532 connect to the local gpg-agent and use its private keys. This
533 enables decrypting or signing data on a remote machine without
534 exposing the private keys to the remote machine.
535 --enable-extended-key-format
538 --disable-extended-key-format
539 Since version 2.3 keys are created in the extended private key
540 format. Changing the passphrase of a key will also convert the
541 key to that new format. This new key format is supported since
542 GnuPG version 2.1.12 and thus there should be no need to disable
543 it. The disable option allows to revert to the old behavior for
544 new keys; be aware that keys are never migrated back to the old
545 format. However if the enable option has been used the disable
546 option won't have an effect. The advantage of the extended pri‐
547 vate key format is that it is text based and can carry addi‐
548 tional meta data.
549 --enable-ssh-support
553 --enable-putty-support
554 The OpenSSH Agent protocol is always enabled, but gpg-agent will
556 only set the SSH_AUTH_SOCK variable if this flag is given.
557 In this mode of operation, the agent does not only implement the
559 gpg-agent protocol, but also the agent protocol used by OpenSSH
560 (through a separate socket). Consequently, it should be possi‐
561 ble to use the gpg-agent as a drop-in replacement for the well
562 known ssh-agent.
563 SSH Keys, which are to be used through the agent, need to be
565 added to the gpg-agent initially through the ssh-add utility.
566 When a key is added, ssh-add will ask for the password of the
567 provided key file and send the unprotected key material to the
568 agent; this causes the gpg-agent to ask for a passphrase, which
569 is to be used for encrypting the newly received key and storing
570 it in a gpg-agent specific directory.
571 Once a key has been added to the gpg-agent this way, the gpg-
573 agent will be ready to use the key.
574 Note: in case the gpg-agent receives a signature request, the
576 user might need to be prompted for a passphrase, which is neces‐
577 sary for decrypting the stored key. Since the ssh-agent proto‐
578 col does not contain a mechanism for telling the agent on which
579 display/terminal it is running, gpg-agent's ssh-support will use
580 the TTY or X display where gpg-agent has been started. To
581 switch this display to the current one, the following command
582 may be used:
583 gpg-connect-agent updatestartuptty /bye
585 Although all GnuPG components try to start the gpg-agent as needed,
587 this is not possible for the ssh support because ssh does not know
588 about it. Thus if no GnuPG tool which accesses the agent has been run,
589 there is no guarantee that ssh is able to use gpg-agent for authentica‐
590 tion. To fix this you may start gpg-agent if needed using this simple
591 command:
592 gpg-connect-agent /bye
594 Adding the --verbose shows the progress of starting the agent.
596 The --enable-putty-support is only available under Windows and allows
598 the use of gpg-agent with the ssh implementation putty. This is simi‐
599 lar to the regular ssh-agent support but makes use of Windows message
600 queue as required by putty.
601 --ssh-fingerprint-digest
605 Select the digest algorithm used to compute ssh fingerprints
607 that are communicated to the user, e.g. in pinentry dialogs.
608 OpenSSH has transitioned from using MD5 to the more secure
609 SHA256.
610 --auto-expand-secmem n
614 Allow Libgcrypt to expand its secure memory area as required.
615 The optional value n is a non-negative integer with a suggested
616 size in bytes of each additionally allocated secure memory area.
617 The value is rounded up to the next 32 KiB; usual C style pre‐
618 fixes are allowed. For an heavy loaded gpg-agent with many con‐
619 current connection this option avoids sign or decrypt errors due
620 to out of secure memory error returns.
621 --s2k-calibration milliseconds
624 Change the default calibration time to milliseconds. The given
625 value is capped at 60 seconds; a value of 0 resets to the com‐
626 piled-in default. This option is re-read on a SIGHUP (or gpg‐
627 conf --reload gpg-agent) and the S2K count is then re-cali‐
628 brated.
629 --s2k-count n
632 Specify the iteration count used to protect the passphrase.
633 This option can be used to override the auto-calibration done by
634 default. The auto-calibration computes a count which requires
635 by default 100ms to mangle a given passphrase. See also --s2k-
636 calibration.
637 To view the actually used iteration count and the milliseconds
639 required for an S2K operation use:
640 gpg-connect-agent 'GETINFO s2k_count' /bye
642 gpg-connect-agent 'GETINFO s2k_time' /bye
643 To view the auto-calibrated count use:
645 gpg-connect-agent 'GETINFO s2k_count_cal' /bye
647
651 It is important to set the environment variable GPG_TTY in your login
652 shell, for example in the ‘~/.bashrc’ init script:
653 export GPG_TTY=$(tty)
655 If you enabled the Ssh Agent Support, you also need to tell ssh about
657 it by adding this to your init script:
658 unset SSH_AGENT_PID
660 if [ "${gnupg_SSH_AUTH_SOCK_by:-0}" -ne $$ ]; then
661 export SSH_AUTH_SOCK="$(gpgconf --list-dirs agent-ssh-socket)"
662 fi
663
668 There are a few configuration files needed for the operation of the
669 agent. By default they may all be found in the current home directory
670 (see: [option --homedir]).
671 gpg-agent.conf
675 This is the standard configuration file read by gpg-agent on
676 startup. It may contain any valid long option; the leading
677 two dashes may not be entered and the option may not be abbre‐
678 viated.
679 This file is also read after a SIGHUP however only a few
680 options will actually have an effect. This default name may
681 be
682 changed on the command line (see: [option --options]).
683 You should backup this file.
684 trustlist.txt
687 This is the list of trusted keys. You should backup this
688 file.
689 Comment lines, indicated by a leading hash mark, as well as
691 empty
692 lines are ignored. To mark a key as trusted you need to enter
693 its
694 fingerprint followed by a space and a capital letter S.
695 Colons
696 may optionally be used to separate the bytes of a fingerprint;
697 this
698 enables cutting and pasting the fingerprint from a key listing
699 output. If
700 the line is prefixed with a ! the key is explicitly marked as
701 not trusted.
702 Here is an example where two keys are marked as ultimately
704 trusted
705 and one as not trusted:
706 .RS 2
708 # CN=Wurzel ZS 3,O=Intevation GmbH,C=DE
709 A6935DD34EF3087973C706FC311AA2CCF733765B S
710 # CN=PCA-1-Verwaltung-02/O=PKI-1-Verwaltung/C=DE
712 DC:BD:69:25:48:BD:BB:7E:31:6E:BB:80:D3:00:80:35:D4:F8:A6:CD S
713 # CN=Root-CA/O=Schlapphuete/L=Pullach/C=DE
715 !14:56:98:D3:FE:9C:CA:5A:31:6E:BC:81:D3:11:4E:00:90:A3:44:C2 S
716 .fi
717 Before entering a key into this file, you need to ensure its
719 authenticity. How to do this depends on your organisation; your
720 administrator might have already entered those keys which are deemed
721 trustworthy enough into this file. Places where to look for the
722 fingerprint of a root certificate are letters received from the CA or
723 the website of the CA (after making 100% sure that this is indeed the
724 website of that CA). You may want to consider disallowing interactive
725 updates of this file by using the [option --no-allow-mark-trusted].
726 It might even be advisable to change the permissions to read-only so
727 that this file can't be changed inadvertently.
728 As a special feature a line include-default will include a global
730 list of trusted certificates (e.g. ‘/etc/gnupg/trustlist.txt’).
731 This global list is also used if the local list is not available;
732 the [option --no-user-trustlist] enforces the use of only
733 this global list.
734 It is possible to add further flags after the S for use by the
736 caller:
737 relax Relax checking of some root certificate requirements. As of now this
741 flag allows the use of root certificates with a missing basicConstraints
742 attribute (despite that it is a MUST for CA certificates) and disables
743 CRL checking for the root certificate.
744 cm If validation of a certificate finally issued by a CA with this flag set
747 fails, try again using the chain validation model.
748 qual The CA is allowed to issue certificates for qualified signatures.
751 This flag has an effect only if used in the global list. This is now
752 the preferred way to mark such CA; the old way of having a separate
753 file ‘qualified.txt’ is still supported.
754 sshcontrol
759 This file is used when support for the secure shell agent protocol has
760 been enabled (see: [option --enable-ssh-support]). Only keys present in
761 this file are used in the SSH protocol. You should backup this file.
762 The ssh-add tool may be used to add new entries to this file;
764 you may also add them manually. Comment lines, indicated by a leading
765 hash mark, as well as empty lines are ignored. An entry starts with
766 optional whitespace, followed by the keygrip of the key given as 40 hex
767 digits, optionally followed by the caching TTL in seconds and another
768 optional field for arbitrary flags. A non-zero TTL overrides the global
769 default as set by --default-cache-ttl-ssh.
770 The only flag support is confirm. If this flag is found for a
772 key, each use of the key will pop up a pinentry to confirm the use of
773 that key. The flag is automatically set if a new key was loaded into
774 gpg-agent using the option -c of the ssh-add
775 command.
776 The keygrip may be prefixed with a ! to disable an entry.
778 The following example lists exactly one key. Note that keys available
780 through a OpenPGP smartcard in the active smartcard reader are
781 implicitly added to this list; i.e. there is no need to list them.
782 # Key added on: 2011-07-20 20:38:46
784 # Fingerprint: 5e:8d:c4:ad:e7:af:6e:27:8a:d6:13:e4:79:ad:0b:81
785 34B62F25E277CF13D3C6BCEBFD3F85D08F0A864B 0 confirm
786 private-keys-v1.d/
789 This is the directory where gpg-agent stores the private keys.
791 Each
792 key is stored in a file with the name made up of the keygrip
793 and the
794 suffix ‘key’. You should backup all files in this directory
795 and take great care to keep this backup closed away.
796 Note that on larger installations, it is useful to put predefined files
800 into the directory ‘/etc/skel/.gnupg’ so that newly created users start
801 up with a working configuration. For existing users the a small helper
802 script is provided to create these files (see: [addgnupghome]).
803
809 A running gpg-agent may be controlled by signals, i.e. using the kill
810 command to send a signal to the process.
811 Here is a list of supported signals:
813 SIGHUP This signal flushes all cached passphrases and if the program
817 has been started with a configuration file, the configuration
818 file is read again. Only certain options are honored: quiet,
819 verbose, debug, debug-all, debug-level, debug-pinentry, no-grab,
820 pinentry-program, pinentry-invisible-char, default-cache-ttl,
821 max-cache-ttl, ignore-cache-for-signing, s2k-count, no-allow-ex‐
822 ternal-cache, allow-emacs-pinentry, no-allow-mark-trusted, dis‐
823 able-scdaemon, and disable-check-own-socket. scdaemon-program
824 is also supported but due to the current implementation, which
825 calls the scdaemon only once, it is not of much use unless you
826 manually kill the scdaemon.
827 SIGTERM
831 Shuts down the process but waits until all current requests are
832 fulfilled. If the process has received 3 of these signals and
833 requests are still pending, a shutdown is forced.
834 SIGINT Shuts down the process immediately.
837 SIGUSR1
840 Dump internal information to the log file.
841 SIGUSR2
844 This signal is used for internal purposes.
845
848 gpg(1), gpgsm(1), gpgconf(1), gpg-connect-agent(1), scdaemon(1)
849 The full documentation for this tool is maintained as a Texinfo manual.
851 If GnuPG and the info program are properly installed at your site, the
852 command
853 info gnupg
855 should give you access to the complete manual including a menu struc‐
857 ture and an index.
858GnuPG 2.3.7 2022-06-27 GPG-AGENT(1)