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 If in ‘common.conf’ the option no-autostart is set, any start
97 attempts will be ignored.
98 In --supervised mode, different file descriptors can be provided
100 for use as different socket types (e.g. ssh, extra) as long as
101 they are identified in the environment variable LISTEN_FDNAMES
102 (see sd_listen_fds(3) on some Linux distributions for more in‐
103 formation on this convention).
104
106 Options may either be used on the command line or, after stripping off
107 the two leading dashes, in the configuration file.
108 --options file
113 Reads configuration from file instead of from the default per-
114 user configuration file. The default configuration file is
115 named ‘gpg-agent.conf’ and expected in the ‘.gnupg’ directory
116 directly below the home directory of the user. This option is
117 ignored if used in an options file.
118 --homedir dir
122 Set the name of the home directory to dir. If this option is not
123 used, the home directory defaults to ‘~/.gnupg’. It is only
124 recognized when given on the command line. It also overrides
125 any home directory stated through the environment variable
126 ‘GNUPGHOME’ or (on Windows systems) by means of the Registry en‐
127 try HKCU\Software\GNU\GnuPG:HomeDir.
128 On Windows systems it is possible to install GnuPG as a portable
130 application. In this case only this command line option is con‐
131 sidered, all other ways to set a home directory are ignored.
132 To install GnuPG as a portable application under Windows, create
134 an empty file named ‘gpgconf.ctl’ in the same directory as the
135 tool ‘gpgconf.exe’. The root of the installation is then that
136 directory; or, if ‘gpgconf.exe’ has been installed directly be‐
137 low a directory named ‘bin’, its parent directory. You also
138 need to make sure that the following directories exist and are
139 writable: ‘ROOT/home’ for the GnuPG home and
140 ‘ROOT/var/cache/gnupg’ for internal cache files.
141 -v
145 --verbose
146 Outputs additional information while running. You can increase
147 the verbosity by giving several verbose commands to gpg-agent,
148 such as ‘-vv’.
149 -q
152 --quiet
153 Try to be as quiet as possible.
154 --batch
157 Don't invoke a pinentry or do any other thing requiring human
158 interaction.
159 --faked-system-time epoch
162 This option is only useful for testing; it sets the system time
163 back or forth to epoch which is the number of seconds elapsed
164 since the year 1970.
165 --debug-level level
168 Select the debug level for investigating problems. level may be
169 a numeric value or a keyword:
170 none No debugging at all. A value of less than 1 may be used
173 instead of the keyword.
174 basic Some basic debug messages. A value between 1 and 2 may
176 be used instead of the keyword.
177 advanced
179 More verbose debug messages. A value between 3 and 5 may
180 be used instead of the keyword.
181 expert Even more detailed messages. A value between 6 and 8 may
183 be used instead of the keyword.
184 guru All of the debug messages you can get. A value greater
186 than 8 may be used instead of the keyword. The creation
187 of hash tracing files is only enabled if the keyword is
188 used.
189 How these messages are mapped to the actual debugging flags is not
191 specified and may change with newer releases of this program. They are
192 however carefully selected to best aid in debugging.
193 --debug flags
196 Set debug flags. All flags are or-ed and flags may be given in
197 C syntax (e.g. 0x0042) or as a comma separated list of flag
198 names. To get a list of all supported flags the single word
199 "help" can be used. This option is only useful for debugging and
200 the behavior may change at any time without notice.
201 --debug-all
204 Same as --debug=0xffffffff
205 --debug-wait n
208 When running in server mode, wait n seconds before entering the
209 actual processing loop and print the pid. This gives time to
210 attach a debugger.
211 --debug-quick-random
214 This option inhibits the use of the very secure random quality
215 level (Libgcrypt’s GCRY_VERY_STRONG_RANDOM) and degrades all re‐
216 quest down to standard random quality. It is only used for
217 testing and should not be used for any production quality keys.
218 This option is only effective when given on the command line.
219 On GNU/Linux, another way to quickly generate insecure keys is
221 to use rngd to fill the kernel's entropy pool with lower quality
222 random data. rngd is typically provided by the rng-tools pack‐
223 age. It can be run as follows: ‘sudo rngd -f -r /dev/urandom’.
224 --debug-pinentry
227 This option enables extra debug information pertaining to the
228 Pinentry. As of now it is only useful when used along with
229 --debug 1024.
230 --no-detach
233 Don't detach the process from the console. This is mainly use‐
234 ful for debugging.
235 --steal-socket
238 In --daemon mode, gpg-agent detects an already running gpg-agent
239 and does not allow to start a new instance. This option can be
240 used to override this check: the new gpg-agent process will try
241 to take over the communication sockets from the already running
242 process and start anyway. This option should in general not be
243 used.
244 -s
248 --sh
249 -c
250 --csh Format the info output in daemon mode for use with the standard
251 Bourne shell or the C-shell respectively. The default is to
252 guess it based on the environment variable SHELL which is cor‐
253 rect in almost all cases.
254 --grab
258 --no-grab
259 Tell the pinentry to grab the keyboard and mouse. This option
260 should be used on X-Servers to avoid X-sniffing attacks. Any use
261 of the option --grab overrides an used option --no-grab. The
262 default is --no-grab.
263 --log-file file
267 Append all logging output to file. This is very helpful in see‐
268 ing what the agent actually does. Use ‘socket://’ to log to
269 socket. If neither a log file nor a log file descriptor has
270 been set on a Windows platform, the Registry entry HKCU\Soft‐
271 ware\GNU\GnuPG:DefaultLogFile, if set, is used to specify the
272 logging output.
273 --no-allow-mark-trusted
278 Do not allow clients to mark keys as trusted, i.e. put them into
279 the ‘trustlist.txt’ file. This makes it harder for users to in‐
280 advertently accept Root-CA keys.
281 --no-user-trustlist
286 Entirely ignore the user trust list and consider only the global
287 trustlist (‘/etc/gnupg/trustlist.txt’). This implies the [op‐
288 tion --no-allow-mark-trusted].
289 --sys-trustlist-name file
292 Changes the default name for the global trustlist from
293 "trustlist.txt" to file. If file does not contain any slashes
294 and does not start with "~/" it is searched in the system con‐
295 figuration directory (‘/etc/gnupg’).
296 --allow-preset-passphrase
300 This option allows the use of gpg-preset-passphrase to seed the
301 internal cache of gpg-agent with passphrases.
302 --no-allow-loopback-pinentry
306 --allow-loopback-pinentry
308 Disallow or allow clients to use the loopback pinentry features;
309 see the option pinentry-mode for details. Allow is the default.
310 The --force option of the Assuan command DELETE_KEY is also con‐
312 trolled by this option: The option is ignored if a loopback
313 pinentry is disallowed.
314 --no-allow-external-cache
317 Tell Pinentry not to enable features which use an external cache
318 for passphrases.
319 Some desktop environments prefer to unlock all credentials with
321 one master password and may have installed a Pinentry which em‐
322 ploys an additional external cache to implement such a policy.
323 By using this option the Pinentry is advised not to make use of
324 such a cache and instead always ask the user for the requested
325 passphrase.
326 --allow-emacs-pinentry
329 Tell Pinentry to allow features to divert the passphrase entry
330 to a running Emacs instance. How this is exactly handled de‐
331 pends on the version of the used Pinentry.
332 --ignore-cache-for-signing
335 This option will let gpg-agent bypass the passphrase cache for
336 all signing operation. Note that there is also a per-session
337 option to control this behavior but this command line option
338 takes precedence.
339 --default-cache-ttl n
342 Set the time a cache entry is valid to n seconds. The default
343 is 600 seconds. Each time a cache entry is accessed, the en‐
344 try's timer is reset. To set an entry's maximum lifetime, use
345 max-cache-ttl. Note that a cached passphrase may not be evicted
346 immediately from memory if no client requests a cache operation.
347 This is due to an internal housekeeping function which is only
348 run every few seconds.
349 --default-cache-ttl-ssh n
352 Set the time a cache entry used for SSH keys is valid to n sec‐
353 onds. The default is 1800 seconds. Each time a cache entry is
354 accessed, the entry's timer is reset. To set an entry's maximum
355 lifetime, use max-cache-ttl-ssh.
356 --max-cache-ttl n
359 Set the maximum time a cache entry is valid to n seconds. After
360 this time a cache entry will be expired even if it has been ac‐
361 cessed recently or has been set using gpg-preset-passphrase.
362 The default is 2 hours (7200 seconds).
363 --max-cache-ttl-ssh n
366 Set the maximum time a cache entry used for SSH keys is valid to
367 n seconds. After this time a cache entry will be expired even
368 if it has been accessed recently or has been set using gpg-pre‐
369 set-passphrase. The default is 2 hours (7200 seconds).
370 --enforce-passphrase-constraints
373 Enforce the passphrase constraints by not allowing the user to
374 bypass them using the ``Take it anyway'' button.
375 --min-passphrase-len n
378 Set the minimal length of a passphrase. When entering a new
379 passphrase shorter than this value a warning will be displayed.
380 Defaults to 8.
381 --min-passphrase-nonalpha n
384 Set the minimal number of digits or special characters required
385 in a passphrase. When entering a new passphrase with less than
386 this number of digits or special characters a warning will be
387 displayed. Defaults to 1.
388 --check-passphrase-pattern file
391 --check-sym-passphrase-pattern file
392 Check the passphrase against the pattern given in file. When
393 entering a new passphrase matching one of these pattern a warn‐
394 ing will be displayed. If file does not contain any slashes and
395 does not start with "~/" it is searched in the system configura‐
396 tion directory (‘/etc/gnupg’). The default is not to use any
397 pattern file. The second version of this option is only used
398 when creating a new symmetric key to allow the use of different
399 patterns for such passphrases.
400 Security note: It is known that checking a passphrase against a
402 list of pattern or even against a complete dictionary is not
403 very effective to enforce good passphrases. Users will soon
404 figure up ways to bypass such a policy. A better policy is to
405 educate users on good security behavior and optionally to run a
406 passphrase cracker regularly on all users passphrases to catch
407 the very simple ones.
408 --max-passphrase-days n
411 Ask the user to change the passphrase if n days have passed
412 since the last change. With --enforce-passphrase-constraints
413 set the user may not bypass this check.
414 --enable-passphrase-history
417 This option does nothing yet.
418 --pinentry-invisible-char char
421 This option asks the Pinentry to use char for displaying hidden
422 characters. char must be one character UTF-8 string. A Pinen‐
423 try may or may not honor this request.
424 --pinentry-timeout n
427 This option asks the Pinentry to timeout after n seconds with no
428 user input. The default value of 0 does not ask the pinentry to
429 timeout, however a Pinentry may use its own default timeout
430 value in this case. A Pinentry may or may not honor this re‐
431 quest.
432 --pinentry-formatted-passphrase
435 This option asks the Pinentry to enable passphrase formatting
436 when asking the user for a new passphrase and masking of the
437 passphrase is turned off.
438 If passphrase formatting is enabled, then all non-breaking space
440 characters are stripped from the entered passphrase. Passphrase
441 formatting is mostly useful in combination with passphrases gen‐
442 erated with the GENPIN feature of some Pinentries. Note that
443 such a generated passphrase, if not modified by the user, skips
444 all passphrase constraints checking because such constraints
445 would actually weaken the generated passphrase.
446 --pinentry-program filename
449 Use program filename as the PIN entry. The default is installa‐
450 tion dependent. With the default configuration the name of the
451 default pinentry is ‘pinentry’; if that file does not exist but
452 a ‘pinentry-basic’ exist the latter is used.
453 On a Windows platform the default is to use the first existing
455 program from this list: ‘bin\pinentry.exe’,
456 ‘..\Gpg4win\bin\pinentry.exe’, ‘..\Gpg4win\pinentry.exe’,
457 ‘..\GNU\GnuPG\pinentry.exe’, ‘..\GNU\bin\pinentry.exe’,
458 ‘bin\pinentry-basic.exe’ where the file names are relative to
459 the GnuPG installation directory.
460 --pinentry-touch-file filename
464 By default the filename of the socket gpg-agent is listening for
465 requests is passed to Pinentry, so that it can touch that file
466 before exiting (it does this only in curses mode). This option
467 changes the file passed to Pinentry to filename. The special
468 name /dev/null may be used to completely disable this feature.
469 Note that Pinentry will not create that file, it will only
470 change the modification and access time.
471 --scdaemon-program filename
475 Use program filename as the Smartcard daemon. The default is
476 installation dependent and can be shown with the gpgconf com‐
477 mand.
478 --disable-scdaemon
481 Do not make use of the scdaemon tool. This option has the ef‐
482 fect of disabling the ability to do smartcard operations. Note,
483 that enabling this option at runtime does not kill an already
484 forked scdaemon.
485 --disable-check-own-socket
488 gpg-agent employs a periodic self-test to detect a stolen
489 socket. This usually means a second instance of gpg-agent has
490 taken over the socket and gpg-agent will then terminate itself.
491 This option may be used to disable this self-test for debugging
492 purposes.
493 --use-standard-socket
496 --no-use-standard-socket
497 --use-standard-socket-p
498 Since GnuPG 2.1 the standard socket is always used. These op‐
499 tions have no more effect. The command gpg-agent --use-stan‐
500 dard-socket-p will thus always return success.
501 --display string
504 --ttyname string
505 --ttytype string
506 --lc-ctype string
507 --lc-messages string
508 --xauthority string
509 These options are used with the server mode to pass localization
510 information.
511 --keep-tty
514 --keep-display
515 Ignore requests to change the current tty or X window system's
516 DISPLAY variable respectively. This is useful to lock the
517 pinentry to pop up at the tty or display you started the agent.
518 --listen-backlog n
521 Set the size of the queue for pending connections. The default
522 is 64.
523 --extra-socket name
527 The extra socket is created by default, you may use this option
528 to change the name of the socket. To disable the creation of
529 the socket use ``none'' or ``/dev/null'' for name.
530 Also listen on native gpg-agent connections on the given socket.
532 The intended use for this extra socket is to setup a Unix domain
533 socket forwarding from a remote machine to this socket on the
534 local machine. A gpg running on the remote machine may then
535 connect to the local gpg-agent and use its private keys. This
536 enables decrypting or signing data on a remote machine without
537 exposing the private keys to the remote machine.
538 --enable-extended-key-format
541 --disable-extended-key-format
542 Since version 2.3 keys are created in the extended private key
543 format. Changing the passphrase of a key will also convert the
544 key to that new format. This new key format is supported since
545 GnuPG version 2.1.12 and thus there should be no need to disable
546 it. The disable option allows to revert to the old behavior for
547 new keys; be aware that keys are never migrated back to the old
548 format. However if the enable option has been used the disable
549 option won't have an effect. The advantage of the extended pri‐
550 vate key format is that it is text based and can carry addi‐
551 tional meta data.
552 --enable-ssh-support
556 --enable-putty-support
557 The OpenSSH Agent protocol is always enabled, but gpg-agent will
559 only set the SSH_AUTH_SOCK variable if this flag is given.
560 In this mode of operation, the agent does not only implement the
562 gpg-agent protocol, but also the agent protocol used by OpenSSH
563 (through a separate socket). Consequently, it should be possi‐
564 ble to use the gpg-agent as a drop-in replacement for the well
565 known ssh-agent.
566 SSH Keys, which are to be used through the agent, need to be
568 added to the gpg-agent initially through the ssh-add utility.
569 When a key is added, ssh-add will ask for the password of the
570 provided key file and send the unprotected key material to the
571 agent; this causes the gpg-agent to ask for a passphrase, which
572 is to be used for encrypting the newly received key and storing
573 it in a gpg-agent specific directory.
574 Once a key has been added to the gpg-agent this way, the gpg-
576 agent will be ready to use the key.
577 Note: in case the gpg-agent receives a signature request, the
579 user might need to be prompted for a passphrase, which is neces‐
580 sary for decrypting the stored key. Since the ssh-agent proto‐
581 col does not contain a mechanism for telling the agent on which
582 display/terminal it is running, gpg-agent's ssh-support will use
583 the TTY or X display where gpg-agent has been started. To
584 switch this display to the current one, the following command
585 may be used:
586 gpg-connect-agent updatestartuptty /bye
588 Although all GnuPG components try to start the gpg-agent as needed,
590 this is not possible for the ssh support because ssh does not know
591 about it. Thus if no GnuPG tool which accesses the agent has been run,
592 there is no guarantee that ssh is able to use gpg-agent for authentica‐
593 tion. To fix this you may start gpg-agent if needed using this simple
594 command:
595 gpg-connect-agent /bye
597 Adding the --verbose shows the progress of starting the agent.
599 The --enable-putty-support is only available under Windows and allows
601 the use of gpg-agent with the ssh implementation putty. This is simi‐
602 lar to the regular ssh-agent support but makes use of Windows message
603 queue as required by putty.
604 --ssh-fingerprint-digest
608 Select the digest algorithm used to compute ssh fingerprints
610 that are communicated to the user, e.g. in pinentry dialogs.
611 OpenSSH has transitioned from using MD5 to the more secure
612 SHA256.
613 --auto-expand-secmem n
617 Allow Libgcrypt to expand its secure memory area as required.
618 The optional value n is a non-negative integer with a suggested
619 size in bytes of each additionally allocated secure memory area.
620 The value is rounded up to the next 32 KiB; usual C style pre‐
621 fixes are allowed. For an heavy loaded gpg-agent with many con‐
622 current connection this option avoids sign or decrypt errors due
623 to out of secure memory error returns.
624 --s2k-calibration milliseconds
627 Change the default calibration time to milliseconds. The given
628 value is capped at 60 seconds; a value of 0 resets to the com‐
629 piled-in default. This option is re-read on a SIGHUP (or gpg‐
630 conf --reload gpg-agent) and the S2K count is then re-cali‐
631 brated.
632 --s2k-count n
635 Specify the iteration count used to protect the passphrase.
636 This option can be used to override the auto-calibration done by
637 default. The auto-calibration computes a count which requires
638 by default 100ms to mangle a given passphrase. See also --s2k-
639 calibration.
640 To view the actually used iteration count and the milliseconds
642 required for an S2K operation use:
643 gpg-connect-agent 'GETINFO s2k_count' /bye
645 gpg-connect-agent 'GETINFO s2k_time' /bye
646 To view the auto-calibrated count use:
648 gpg-connect-agent 'GETINFO s2k_count_cal' /bye
650
654 It is important to set the environment variable GPG_TTY in your login
655 shell, for example in the ‘~/.bashrc’ init script:
656 export GPG_TTY=$(tty)
658 If you enabled the Ssh Agent Support, you also need to tell ssh about
660 it by adding this to your init script:
661 unset SSH_AGENT_PID
663 if [ "${gnupg_SSH_AUTH_SOCK_by:-0}" -ne $$ ]; then
664 export SSH_AUTH_SOCK="$(gpgconf --list-dirs agent-ssh-socket)"
665 fi
666
671 There are a few configuration files needed for the operation of the
672 agent. By default they may all be found in the current home directory
673 (see: [option --homedir]).
674 gpg-agent.conf
678 This is the standard configuration file read by gpg-agent on
679 startup. It may contain any valid long option; the leading
680 two dashes may not be entered and the option may not be abbre‐
681 viated.
682 This file is also read after a SIGHUP however only a few
683 options will actually have an effect. This default name may
684 be
685 changed on the command line (see: [option --options]).
686 You should backup this file.
687 trustlist.txt
690 This is the list of trusted keys. You should backup this
691 file.
692 Comment lines, indicated by a leading hash mark, as well as
694 empty
695 lines are ignored. To mark a key as trusted you need to enter
696 its
697 fingerprint followed by a space and a capital letter S.
698 Colons
699 may optionally be used to separate the bytes of a fingerprint;
700 this
701 enables cutting and pasting the fingerprint from a key listing
702 output. If
703 the line is prefixed with a ! the key is explicitly marked as
704 not trusted.
705 Here is an example where two keys are marked as ultimately
707 trusted
708 and one as not trusted:
709 .RS 2
711 # CN=Wurzel ZS 3,O=Intevation GmbH,C=DE
712 A6935DD34EF3087973C706FC311AA2CCF733765B S
713 # CN=PCA-1-Verwaltung-02/O=PKI-1-Verwaltung/C=DE
715 DC:BD:69:25:48:BD:BB:7E:31:6E:BB:80:D3:00:80:35:D4:F8:A6:CD S
716 # CN=Root-CA/O=Schlapphuete/L=Pullach/C=DE
718 !14:56:98:D3:FE:9C:CA:5A:31:6E:BC:81:D3:11:4E:00:90:A3:44:C2 S
719 .fi
720 Before entering a key into this file, you need to ensure its
722 authenticity. How to do this depends on your organisation; your
723 administrator might have already entered those keys which are deemed
724 trustworthy enough into this file. Places where to look for the
725 fingerprint of a root certificate are letters received from the CA or
726 the website of the CA (after making 100% sure that this is indeed the
727 website of that CA). You may want to consider disallowing interactive
728 updates of this file by using the [option --no-allow-mark-trusted].
729 It might even be advisable to change the permissions to read-only so
730 that this file can't be changed inadvertently.
731 As a special feature a line include-default will include a global
733 list of trusted certificates (e.g. ‘/etc/gnupg/trustlist.txt’).
734 This global list is also used if the local list is not available;
735 the [option --no-user-trustlist] enforces the use of only
736 this global list.
737 It is possible to add further flags after the S for use by the
739 caller:
740 relax Relax checking of some root certificate requirements. As of now this
744 flag allows the use of root certificates with a missing basicConstraints
745 attribute (despite that it is a MUST for CA certificates) and disables
746 CRL checking for the root certificate.
747 cm If validation of a certificate finally issued by a CA with this flag set
750 fails, try again using the chain validation model.
751 qual The CA is allowed to issue certificates for qualified signatures.
754 This flag has an effect only if used in the global list. This is now
755 the preferred way to mark such CA; the old way of having a separate
756 file ‘qualified.txt’ is still supported.
757 sshcontrol
762 This file is used when support for the secure shell agent protocol has
763 been enabled (see: [option --enable-ssh-support]). Only keys present in
764 this file are used in the SSH protocol. You should backup this file.
765 The ssh-add tool may be used to add new entries to this file;
767 you may also add them manually. Comment lines, indicated by a leading
768 hash mark, as well as empty lines are ignored. An entry starts with
769 optional whitespace, followed by the keygrip of the key given as 40 hex
770 digits, optionally followed by the caching TTL in seconds and another
771 optional field for arbitrary flags. A non-zero TTL overrides the global
772 default as set by --default-cache-ttl-ssh.
773 The only flag support is confirm. If this flag is found for a
775 key, each use of the key will pop up a pinentry to confirm the use of
776 that key. The flag is automatically set if a new key was loaded into
777 gpg-agent using the option -c of the ssh-add
778 command.
779 The keygrip may be prefixed with a ! to disable an entry.
781 The following example lists exactly one key. Note that keys available
783 through a OpenPGP smartcard in the active smartcard reader are
784 implicitly added to this list; i.e. there is no need to list them.
785 # Key added on: 2011-07-20 20:38:46
787 # Fingerprint: 5e:8d:c4:ad:e7:af:6e:27:8a:d6:13:e4:79:ad:0b:81
788 34B62F25E277CF13D3C6BCEBFD3F85D08F0A864B 0 confirm
789 private-keys-v1.d/
792 This is the directory where gpg-agent stores the private keys.
794 Each
795 key is stored in a file with the name made up of the keygrip
796 and the
797 suffix ‘key’. You should backup all files in this directory
798 and take great care to keep this backup closed away.
799 Note that on larger installations, it is useful to put predefined files
803 into the directory ‘/etc/skel/.gnupg’ so that newly created users start
804 up with a working configuration. For existing users the a small helper
805 script is provided to create these files (see: [addgnupghome]).
806
812 A running gpg-agent may be controlled by signals, i.e. using the kill
813 command to send a signal to the process.
814 Here is a list of supported signals:
816 SIGHUP This signal flushes all cached passphrases and if the program
820 has been started with a configuration file, the configuration
821 file is read again. Only certain options are honored: quiet,
822 verbose, debug, debug-all, debug-level, debug-pinentry, no-grab,
823 pinentry-program, pinentry-invisible-char, default-cache-ttl,
824 max-cache-ttl, ignore-cache-for-signing, s2k-count, no-allow-ex‐
825 ternal-cache, allow-emacs-pinentry, no-allow-mark-trusted, dis‐
826 able-scdaemon, and disable-check-own-socket. scdaemon-program
827 is also supported but due to the current implementation, which
828 calls the scdaemon only once, it is not of much use unless you
829 manually kill the scdaemon.
830 SIGTERM
834 Shuts down the process but waits until all current requests are
835 fulfilled. If the process has received 3 of these signals and
836 requests are still pending, a shutdown is forced.
837 SIGINT Shuts down the process immediately.
840 SIGUSR1
843 Dump internal information to the log file.
844 SIGUSR2
847 This signal is used for internal purposes.
848
851 gpg(1), gpgsm(1), gpgconf(1), gpg-connect-agent(1), scdaemon(1)
852 The full documentation for this tool is maintained as a Texinfo manual.
854 If GnuPG and the info program are properly installed at your site, the
855 command
856 info gnupg
858 should give you access to the complete manual including a menu struc‐
860 ture and an index.
861GnuPG 2.4.0 2022-12-16 GPG-AGENT(1)