1GPGSM(1) GNU Privacy Guard 2.4 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 --keyserver string
309 This is a deprecated option. It was used to add an LDAP server
310 to use for X.509 certificate and CRL lookup. The alias
311 --ldapserver existed from version 2.2.28 to 2.2.33 and 2.3.2 to
312 2.3.4 but is now entirely ignored.
313 LDAP servers must be given in the configuration for dirmngr.
315 --policy-file filename
318 Change the default name of the policy file to filename. The de‐
319 fault name is ‘policies.txt’.
320 --agent-program file
323 Specify an agent program to be used for secret key operations.
324 The default value is determined by running the command gpgconf.
325 Note that the pipe symbol (|) is used for a regression test
326 suite hack and may thus not be used in the file name.
327 --dirmngr-program file
330 Specify a dirmngr program to be used for CRL checks. The de‐
331 fault value is ‘/usr/bin/dirmngr’.
332 --prefer-system-dirmngr
335 This option is obsolete and ignored.
336 --disable-dirmngr
339 Entirely disable the use of the Dirmngr.
340 --no-autostart
343 Do not start the gpg-agent or the dirmngr if it has not yet been
344 started and its service is required. This option is mostly use‐
345 ful on machines where the connection to gpg-agent has been redi‐
346 rected to another machines. If dirmngr is required on the re‐
347 mote machine, it may be started manually using gpgconf --launch
348 dirmngr.
349 --no-secmem-warning
352 Do not print a warning when the so called "secure memory" cannot
353 be used.
354 --log-file file
357 When running in server mode, append all logging output to file.
358 Use ‘socket://’ to log to socket.
359 --log-time
362 Prefix all log output with a timestamp even if no log file is
363 used.
364 Certificate related options
367 --enable-policy-checks
372 --disable-policy-checks
373 By default policy checks are enabled. These options may be used
374 to change it.
375 --enable-crl-checks
378 --disable-crl-checks
379 By default the CRL checks are enabled and the DirMngr is used to
380 check for revoked certificates. The disable option is most use‐
381 ful with an off-line network connection to suppress this check
382 and also to avoid that new certificates introduce a web bug by
383 including a certificate specific CRL DP. The disable option
384 also disables an issuer certificate lookup via the authorityIn‐
385 foAccess property of the certificate; the --enable-issuer-key-
386 retrieve can be used to make use of that property anyway.
387 --enable-trusted-cert-crl-check
390 --disable-trusted-cert-crl-check
391 By default the CRL for trusted root certificates are checked
392 like for any other certificates. This allows a CA to revoke its
393 own certificates voluntary without the need of putting all ever
394 issued certificates into a CRL. The disable option may be used
395 to switch this extra check off. Due to the caching done by the
396 Dirmngr, there will not be any noticeable performance gain.
397 Note, that this also disables possible OCSP checks for trusted
398 root certificates. A more specific way of disabling this check
399 is by adding the ``relax'' keyword to the root CA line of the
400 ‘trustlist.txt’
401 --force-crl-refresh
405 Tell the dirmngr to reload the CRL for each request. For better
406 performance, the dirmngr will actually optimize this by sup‐
407 pressing the loading for short time intervals (e.g. 30 minutes).
408 This option is useful to make sure that a fresh CRL is available
409 for certificates hold in the keybox. The suggested way of doing
410 this is by using it along with the option --with-validation for
411 a key listing command. This option should not be used in a con‐
412 figuration file.
413 --enable-issuer-based-crl-check
416 Run a CRL check even for certificates which do not have any CRL
417 distribution point. This requires that a suitable LDAP server
418 has been configured in Dirmngr and that the CRL can be found us‐
419 ing the issuer. This option reverts to what GnuPG did up to
420 version 2.2.20. This option is in general not useful.
421 --enable-ocsp
424 --disable-ocsp
425 By default OCSP checks are disabled. The enable option may be
426 used to enable OCSP checks via Dirmngr. If CRL checks are also
427 enabled, CRLs will be used as a fallback if for some reason an
428 OCSP request will not succeed. Note, that you have to allow
429 OCSP requests in Dirmngr's configuration too (option --allow-
430 ocsp) and configure Dirmngr properly. If you do not do so you
431 will get the error code ‘Not supported’.
432 --auto-issuer-key-retrieve
435 If a required certificate is missing while validating the chain
436 of certificates, try to load that certificate from an external
437 location. This usually means that Dirmngr is employed to search
438 for the certificate. Note that this option makes a "web bug"
439 like behavior possible. LDAP server operators can see which
440 keys you request, so by sending you a message signed by a brand
441 new key (which you naturally will not have on your local key‐
442 box), the operator can tell both your IP address and the time
443 when you verified the signature. Note that if CRL checking is
444 not disabled issuer certificates are retrieved in any case using
445 the caIssuers authorityInfoAccess method.
446 --validation-model name
451 This option changes the default validation model. The only pos‐
452 sible values are "shell" (which is the default), "chain" which
453 forces the use of the chain model and "steed" for a new simpli‐
454 fied model. The chain model is also used if an option in the
455 ‘trustlist.txt’ or an attribute of the certificate requests it.
456 However the standard model (shell) is in that case always tried
457 first.
458 --ignore-cert-extension oid
461 Add oid to the list of ignored certificate extensions. The oid
462 is expected to be in dotted decimal form, like 2.5.29.3. This
463 option may be used more than once. Critical flagged certificate
464 extensions matching one of the OIDs in the list are treated as
465 if they are actually handled and thus the certificate will not
466 be rejected due to an unknown critical extension. Use this op‐
467 tion with care because extensions are usually flagged as criti‐
468 cal for a reason.
469 Input and Output
472 --armor
476 -a Create PEM encoded output. Default is binary output.
477 --base64
480 Create Base-64 encoded output; i.e. PEM without the header
481 lines.
482 --assume-armor
485 Assume the input data is PEM encoded. Default is to autodetect
486 the encoding but this is may fail.
487 --assume-base64
490 Assume the input data is plain base-64 encoded.
491 --assume-binary
494 Assume the input data is binary encoded.
495 --input-size-hint n
498 This option can be used to tell GPGSM the size of the input data
499 in bytes. n must be a positive base-10 number. It is used by
500 the --status-fd line ``PROGRESS'' to provide a value for ``to‐
501 tal'' if that is not available by other means.
502 --p12-charset name
506 gpgsm uses the UTF-8 encoding when encoding passphrases for
507 PKCS#12 files. This option may be used to force the passphrase
508 to be encoded in the specified encoding name. This is useful if
509 the application used to import the key uses a different encoding
510 and thus will not be able to import a file generated by gpgsm.
511 Commonly used values for name are Latin1 and CP850. Note that
512 gpgsm itself automagically imports any file with a passphrase
513 encoded to the most commonly used encodings.
514 --default-key user_id
518 Use user_id as the standard key for signing. This key is used
519 if no other key has been defined as a signing key. Note, that
520 the first --local-users option also sets this key if it has not
521 yet been set; however --default-key always overrides this.
522 --local-user user_id
526 -u user_id
528 Set the user(s) to be used for signing. The default is the
529 first secret key found in the database.
530 --recipient name
534 -r Encrypt to the user id name. There are several ways a user id
535 may be given (see: [how-to-specify-a-user-id]).
536 --output file
540 -o file
541 Write output to file. The default is to write it to stdout.
542 --with-key-data
547 Displays extra information with the --list-keys commands. Espe‐
548 cially a line tagged grp is printed which tells you the keygrip
549 of a key. This string is for example used as the file name of
550 the secret key. Implies --with-colons.
551 --with-validation
555 When doing a key listing, do a full validation check for each
556 key and print the result. This is usually a slow operation be‐
557 cause it requires a CRL lookup and other operations.
558 When used along with --import, a validation of the certificate
560 to import is done and only imported if it succeeds the test.
561 Note that this does not affect an already available certificate
562 in the DB. This option is therefore useful to simply verify a
563 certificate.
564 --with-md5-fingerprint
568 For standard key listings, also print the MD5 fingerprint of the
569 certificate.
570 --with-keygrip
573 Include the keygrip in standard key listings. Note that the
574 keygrip is always listed in --with-colons mode.
575 --with-secret
578 Include info about the presence of a secret key in public key
579 listings done with --with-colons.
580 --no-pretty-dn
583 By default gpgsm prints distinguished names (DNs) like the Is‐
584 suer or Subject in a more readable format (e.g. using a well de‐
585 fined order of the parts). However, this format can't be used
586 as input strings. This option reverts printing to standard
587 RFC-2253 format and thus avoids the need to use --dump-cert or
588 --with-colons to get the ``real'' name.
589 How to change how the CMS is created
592 --include-certs n
596 Using n of -2 includes all certificate except for the root cert,
597 -1 includes all certs, 0 does not include any certs, 1 includes
598 only the signers cert and all other positive values include up
599 to n certificates starting with the signer cert. The default is
600 -2.
601 --cipher-algo oid
604 Use the cipher algorithm with the ASN.1 object identifier oid
605 for encryption. For convenience the strings 3DES, AES and
606 AES256 may be used instead of their OIDs. The default is AES
607 (2.16.840.1.101.3.4.1.2).
608 --digest-algo name
611 Use name as the message digest algorithm. Usually this algo‐
612 rithm is deduced from the respective signing certificate. This
613 option forces the use of the given algorithm and may lead to se‐
614 vere interoperability problems.
615 Doing things one usually do not want to do
618 --chuid uid
624 Change the current user to uid which may either be a number or a
625 name. This can be used from the root account to run gpgsm for
626 another user. If uid is not the current UID a standard PATH is
627 set and the envvar GNUPGHOME is unset. To override the latter
628 the option --homedir can be used. This option has only an ef‐
629 fect when used on the command line. This option has currently
630 no effect at all on Windows.
631 --extra-digest-algo name
635 Sometimes signatures are broken in that they announce a differ‐
636 ent digest algorithm than actually used. gpgsm uses a one-pass
637 data processing model and thus needs to rely on the announced
638 digest algorithms to properly hash the data. As a workaround
639 this option may be used to tell gpgsm to also hash the data us‐
640 ing the algorithm name; this slows processing down a little bit
641 but allows verification of such broken signatures. If gpgsm
642 prints an error like ``digest algo 8 has not been enabled'' you
643 may want to try this option, with ‘SHA256’ for name.
644 --compliance string
647 Set the compliance mode. Valid values are shown when using
648 "help" for string.
649 --min-rsa-length n
652 This option adjusts the compliance mode "de-vs" for stricter key
653 size requirements. For example, a value of 3000 turns rsa2048
654 and dsa2048 keys into non-VS-NfD compliant keys.
655 --require-compliance
658 To check that data has been encrypted according to the rules of
659 the current compliance mode, a gpgsm user needs to evaluate the
660 status lines. This is allows frontends to handle compliance
661 check in a more flexible way. However, for scripted use the re‐
662 quired evaluation of the status-line requires quite some effort;
663 this option can be used instead to make sure that the gpgsm
664 process exits with a failure if the compliance rules are not
665 fulfilled. Note that this option has currently an effect only
666 in "de-vs" mode.
667 --ignore-cert-with-oid oid
670 Add oid to the list of OIDs to be checked while reading certifi‐
671 cates from smartcards. The oid is expected to be in dotted deci‐
672 mal form, like 2.5.29.3. This option may be used more than
673 once. As of now certificates with an extended key usage match‐
674 ing one of those OIDs are ignored during a --learn-card opera‐
675 tion and not imported. This option can help to keep the local
676 key database clear of unneeded certificates stored on smart‐
677 cards.
678 --faked-system-time epoch
681 This option is only useful for testing; it sets the system time
682 back or forth to epoch which is the number of seconds elapsed
683 since the year 1970. Alternatively epoch may be given as a full
684 ISO time string (e.g. "20070924T154812").
685 --with-ephemeral-keys
688 Include ephemeral flagged keys in the output of key listings.
689 Note that they are included anyway if the key specification for
690 a listing is given as fingerprint or keygrip.
691 --compatibility-flags flags
694 Set compatibility flags to work around problems due to non-com‐
695 pliant certificates or data. The flags are given as a comma
696 separated list of flag names and are OR-ed together. The spe‐
697 cial flag "none" clears the list and allows to start over with
698 an empty list. To get a list of available flags the sole word
699 "help" can be used.
700 --debug-level level
703 Select the debug level for investigating problems. level may be
704 a numeric value or by a keyword:
705 none No debugging at all. A value of less than 1 may be used
708 instead of the keyword.
709 basic Some basic debug messages. A value between 1 and 2 may
711 be used instead of the keyword.
712 advanced
714 More verbose debug messages. A value between 3 and 5 may
715 be used instead of the keyword.
716 expert Even more detailed messages. A value between 6 and 8 may
718 be used instead of the keyword.
719 guru All of the debug messages you can get. A value greater
721 than 8 may be used instead of the keyword. The creation
722 of hash tracing files is only enabled if the keyword is
723 used.
724 How these messages are mapped to the actual debugging flags is not
726 specified and may change with newer releases of this program. They are
727 however carefully selected to best aid in debugging.
728 --debug flags
731 Set debug flags. All flags are or-ed and flags may be given in
732 C syntax (e.g. 0x0042) or as a comma separated list of flag
733 names. To get a list of all supported flags the single word
734 "help" can be used. This option is only useful for debugging and
735 the behavior may change at any time without notice.
736 Note, that all flags set using this option may get overridden by
738 --debug-level.
739 --debug-all
742 Same as --debug=0xffffffff
743 --debug-allow-core-dump
746 Usually gpgsm tries to avoid dumping core by well written code
747 and by disabling core dumps for security reasons. However, bugs
748 are pretty durable beasts and to squash them it is sometimes
749 useful to have a core dump. This option enables core dumps un‐
750 less the Bad Thing happened before the option parsing.
751 --debug-no-chain-validation
754 This is actually not a debugging option but only useful as such.
755 It lets gpgsm bypass all certificate chain validation checks.
756 --debug-ignore-expiration
759 This is actually not a debugging option but only useful as such.
760 It lets gpgsm ignore all notAfter dates, this is used by the re‐
761 gression tests.
762 --passphrase-fd n
765 Read the passphrase from file descriptor n. Only the first line
766 will be read from file descriptor n. If you use 0 for n, the
767 passphrase will be read from STDIN. This can only be used if
768 only one passphrase is supplied.
769 Note that this passphrase is only used if the option --batch has
771 also been given.
772 --pinentry-mode mode
775 Set the pinentry mode to mode. Allowed values for mode are:
776 default
778 Use the default of the agent, which is ask.
779 ask Force the use of the Pinentry.
781 cancel Emulate use of Pinentry's cancel button.
783 error Return a Pinentry error (``No Pinentry'').
785 loopback
787 Redirect Pinentry queries to the caller. Note that in
788 contrast to Pinentry the user is not prompted again if he
789 enters a bad password.
790 --request-origin origin
793 Tell gpgsm to assume that the operation ultimately originated at
794 origin. Depending on the origin certain restrictions are ap‐
795 plied and the Pinentry may include an extra note on the origin.
796 Supported values for origin are: local which is the default, re‐
797 mote to indicate a remote origin or browser for an operation re‐
798 quested by a web browser.
799 --no-common-certs-import
802 Suppress the import of common certificates on keybox creation.
803 All the long options may also be given in the configuration file after
806 stripping off the two leading dashes.
807
811 There are different ways to specify a user ID to GnuPG. Some of them
812 are only valid for gpg others are only good for gpgsm. Here is the en‐
813 tire list of ways to specify a key:
814 By key Id.
818 This format is deduced from the length of the string and its
819 content or 0x prefix. The key Id of an X.509 certificate are the
820 low 64 bits of its SHA-1 fingerprint. The use of key Ids is
821 just a shortcut, for all automated processing the fingerprint
822 should be used.
823 When using gpg an exclamation mark (!) may be appended to force
825 using the specified primary or secondary key and not to try and
826 calculate which primary or secondary key to use.
827 The last four lines of the example give the key ID in their long
829 form as internally used by the OpenPGP protocol. You can see the
830 long key ID using the option --with-colons.
831 234567C4
833 0F34E556E
834 01347A56A
835 0xAB123456
836 234AABBCC34567C4
838 0F323456784E56EAB
839 01AB3FED1347A5612
840 0x234AABBCC34567C4
841 By fingerprint.
846 This format is deduced from the length of the string and its
847 content or the 0x prefix. Note, that only the 20 byte version
848 fingerprint is available with gpgsm (i.e. the SHA-1 hash of the
849 certificate).
850 When using gpg an exclamation mark (!) may be appended to force
852 using the specified primary or secondary key and not to try and
853 calculate which primary or secondary key to use.
854 The best way to specify a key Id is by using the fingerprint.
856 This avoids any ambiguities in case that there are duplicated
857 key IDs.
858 1234343434343434C434343434343434
860 123434343434343C3434343434343734349A3434
861 0E12343434343434343434EAB3484343434343434
862 0xE12343434343434343434EAB3484343434343434
863 gpgsm also accepts colons between each pair of hexadecimal digits be‐
866 cause this is the de-facto standard on how to present X.509 finger‐
867 prints. gpg also allows the use of the space separated SHA-1 finger‐
868 print as printed by the key listing commands.
869 By exact match on OpenPGP user ID.
872 This is denoted by a leading equal sign. It does not make sense
873 for X.509 certificates.
874 =Heinrich Heine <heinrichh@uni-duesseldorf.de>
876 By exact match on an email address.
879 This is indicated by enclosing the email address in the usual
880 way with left and right angles.
881 <heinrichh@uni-duesseldorf.de>
883 By partial match on an email address.
887 This is indicated by prefixing the search string with an @.
888 This uses a substring search but considers only the mail address
889 (i.e. inside the angle brackets).
890 @heinrichh
892 By exact match on the subject's DN.
895 This is indicated by a leading slash, directly followed by the
896 RFC-2253 encoded DN of the subject. Note that you can't use the
897 string printed by gpgsm --list-keys because that one has been
898 reordered and modified for better readability; use --with-colons
899 to print the raw (but standard escaped) RFC-2253 string.
900 /CN=Heinrich Heine,O=Poets,L=Paris,C=FR
902 By exact match on the issuer's DN.
905 This is indicated by a leading hash mark, directly followed by a
906 slash and then directly followed by the RFC-2253 encoded DN of
907 the issuer. This should return the Root cert of the issuer.
908 See note above.
909 #/CN=Root Cert,O=Poets,L=Paris,C=FR
911 By exact match on serial number and issuer's DN.
915 This is indicated by a hash mark, followed by the hexadecimal
916 representation of the serial number, then followed by a slash
917 and the RFC-2253 encoded DN of the issuer. See note above.
918 #4F03/CN=Root Cert,O=Poets,L=Paris,C=FR
920 By keygrip.
923 This is indicated by an ampersand followed by the 40 hex digits
924 of a keygrip. gpgsm prints the keygrip when using the command
925 --dump-cert.
926 &D75F22C3F86E355877348498CDC92BD21010A480
928 By substring match.
932 This is the default mode but applications may want to explicitly
933 indicate this by putting the asterisk in front. Match is not
934 case sensitive.
935 Heine
937 *Heine
938 . and + prefixes
941 These prefixes are reserved for looking up mails anchored at the
942 end and for a word search mode. They are not yet implemented
943 and using them is undefined.
944 Please note that we have reused the hash mark identifier which
947 was used in old GnuPG versions to indicate the so called local-
948 id. It is not anymore used and there should be no conflict when
949 used with X.509 stuff.
950 Using the RFC-2253 format of DNs has the drawback that it is not
952 possible to map them back to the original encoding, however we
953 don't have to do this because our key database stores this en‐
954 coding as meta data.
955
959 $ gpgsm -er goo@bar.net <plaintext >ciphertext
960
965 There are a few configuration files to control certain aspects of
966 gpgsm's operation. Unless noted, they are expected in the current home
967 directory (see: [option --homedir]).
968 gpgsm.conf
972 This is the standard configuration file read by gpgsm on
973 startup. It may contain any valid long option; the leading two
974 dashes may not be entered and the option may not be abbreviated.
975 This default name may be changed on the command line (see:
976 [gpgsm-option --options]). You should backup this file.
977 common.conf
980 This is an optional configuration file read by gpgsm on startup.
981 It may contain options pertaining to all components of GnuPG.
982 Its current main use is for the "use-keyboxd" option.
983 policies.txt
986 This is a list of allowed CA policies. This file should list
987 the object identifiers of the policies line by line. Empty
988 lines and lines starting with a hash mark are ignored. Policies
989 missing in this file and not marked as critical in the certifi‐
990 cate will print only a warning; certificates with policies
991 marked as critical and not listed in this file will fail the
992 signature verification. You should backup this file.
993 For example, to allow only the policy 2.289.9.9, the file should
995 look like this:
996 # Allowed policies
998 2.289.9.9
999 qualified.txt
1002 This is the list of root certificates used for qualified cer‐
1003 tificates. They are defined as certificates capable of creating
1004 legally binding signatures in the same way as handwritten signa‐
1005 tures are. Comments start with a hash mark and empty lines are
1006 ignored. Lines do have a length limit but this is not a serious
1007 limitation as the format of the entries is fixed and checked by
1008 gpgsm: A non-comment line starts with optional whitespace, fol‐
1009 lowed by exactly 40 hex characters, white space and a lowercased
1010 2 letter country code. Additional data delimited with by a
1011 white space is current ignored but might late be used for other
1012 purposes.
1013 Note that even if a certificate is listed in this file, this
1015 does not mean that the certificate is trusted; in general the
1016 certificates listed in this file need to be listed also in
1017 ‘trustlist.txt’. This is a global file an installed in the
1018 sysconf directory (e.g. ‘/etc/gnupg/qualified.txt’).
1019 Every time gpgsm uses a certificate for signing or verification
1021 this file will be consulted to check whether the certificate un‐
1022 der question has ultimately been issued by one of these CAs. If
1023 this is the case the user will be informed that the verified
1024 signature represents a legally binding (``qualified'') signa‐
1025 ture. When creating a signature using such a certificate an ex‐
1026 tra prompt will be issued to let the user confirm that such a
1027 legally binding signature shall really be created.
1028 Because this software has not yet been approved for use with
1030 such certificates, appropriate notices will be shown to indicate
1031 this fact.
1032 help.txt
1035 This is plain text file with a few help entries used with pinen‐
1036 try as well as a large list of help items for gpg and gpgsm.
1037 The standard file has English help texts; to install localized
1038 versions use filenames like ‘help.LL.txt’ with LL denoting the
1039 locale. GnuPG comes with a set of predefined help files in the
1040 data directory (e.g. ‘/usr/share/gnupg/gnupg/help.de.txt’) and
1041 allows overriding of any help item by help files stored in the
1042 system configuration directory (e.g. ‘/etc/gnupg/help.de.txt’).
1043 For a reference of the help file's syntax, please see the in‐
1044 stalled ‘help.txt’ file.
1045 com-certs.pem
1049 This file is a collection of common certificates used to popu‐
1050 lated a newly created ‘pubring.kbx’. An administrator may re‐
1051 place this file with a custom one. The format is a concatena‐
1052 tion of PEM encoded X.509 certificates. This global file is in‐
1053 stalled in the data directory (e.g. ‘/usr/share/gnupg/com-
1054 certs.pem’).
1055 Note that on larger installations, it is useful to put predefined files
1058 into the directory ‘/etc/skel/.gnupg/’ so that newly created users
1059 start up with a working configuration. For existing users a small
1060 helper script is provided to create these files (see: [addgnupghome]).
1061 For internal purposes gpgsm creates and maintains a few other files;
1063 they all live in the current home directory (see: [option --homedir]).
1064 Only gpgsm may modify these files.
1065 pubring.kbx
1069 This a database file storing the certificates as well as meta
1070 information. For debugging purposes the tool kbxutil may be
1071 used to show the internal structure of this file. You should
1072 backup this file.
1073 random_seed
1076 This content of this file is used to maintain the internal state
1077 of the random number generator across invocations. The same
1078 file is used by other programs of this software too.
1079 S.gpg-agent
1082 If this file exists gpgsm will first try to connect to this
1083 socket for accessing gpg-agent before starting a new gpg-agent
1084 instance. Under Windows this socket (which in reality be a
1085 plain file describing a regular TCP listening port) is the stan‐
1086 dard way of connecting the gpg-agent.
1087
1090 gpg(1), gpg-agent(1)
1091 The full documentation for this tool is maintained as a Texinfo manual.
1093 If GnuPG and the info program are properly installed at your site, the
1094 command
1095 info gnupg
1097 should give you access to the complete manual including a menu struc‐
1099 ture and an index.
1100GnuPG 2.4.3 2023-06-21 GPGSM(1)