Commands are not distinguished from options execpt for the fact that only one command is allowed.

--version

Print the program version and licensing information. Not that you can abbreviate this command.

--help, -h

Print a usage message summarizing the most usefule command-line options. Not that you can abbreviate this command.

--warranty

Print warranty information.

--dump-options

Print a list of all available options and commands. Not that you can abbreviate this command.

--encrypt

Perform an encryption. The keys the data is encrypted too must be set using the option --recipient.

--decrypt

Perform a decryption; the type of input is automatically determined. It may either be in binary form or PEM encoded; automatic determination of base-64 encoding is not done.

--sign

Create a digital signature. The key used is either the fist one found in the keybox or those set with the --local-user option.

--verify

Check a signature file for validity. Depending on the arguments a detached signatrue may also be checked.

--server

Run in server mode and wait for commands on the stdin.

--call-dirmngr command [args]

Behave as a Dirmngr client issuing the request command with the optional list of args. The output of the Dirmngr is printed stdout. Please note that file names given as arguments should have an absulte file name (i.e. commencing with / because they are passed verbatim to the Dirmngr and the working directory of the Dirmngr might not be the same as the one of this client. Currently it is not possible to pass data via stdin to the Dirmngr. command should not contain spaces.

This is command is required for certain maintaining tasks of the dirmngr where a dirmngr must be able to call back to gpgsm. See the Dirmngr manual for details.

--call-protect-tool arguments

Certain maintenance operations are done by an external program call gpg-protect-tool; this is usually not installed in a directory listed in the PATH variable. This command provides a simple wrapper to access this tool. arguments are passed verbatim to this command; use to get a list of supported operations.

--gen-key

Generate a new key and a certificate request.

--list-keys

-k

List all available certificates stored in the local key database. Note that the displayed data might be reformatted for better human readability and illegal characters are replaced by safe substitutes.

--list-secret-keys

-K

List all available certificates for which a corresponding a secret key is available.

--list-external-keys pattern

List certificates matching pattern using an external server. This utilizes the dirmngr service.

--list-chain

Same as --list-keys but also prints all keys making up the chain.

--dump-cert

--dump-keys

List all available certificates stored in the local key database using a format useful mainly for debugging.

--dump-chain

Same as --dump-keys but also prints all keys making up the chain.

--dump-secret-keys

List all available certificates for which a corresponding a secret key is available using a format useful mainly for debugging.

--dump-external-keys pattern

List certificates matching pattern using an external server. This utilizes the dirmngr service. It uses a format useful mainly for debugging.

--keydb-clear-some-cert-flags

This is a debugging aid to reset certain flags in the key database which are used to cache certain certificate stati. It is especially useful if a bad CRL or a weird running OCSP reponder did accidently revoke certificate. There is no security issue with this command because gpgsm always make sure that the validity of a certificate is checked right before it is used.

--delete-keys pattern

Delete the keys matching pattern.

--export [pattern]

Export all certificates stored in the Keybox or those specified by the optional pattern. When using along with the --armor option a few informational lines are prepended before each block.

--export-secret-key-p12 key-id

Export the private key and the certificate identified by key-id in a PKCS#12 format. When using along with the --armor option a few informational lines are prepended to the output. Note, that the PKCS#12 format is higly insecure and this command is only provided if there is no other way to exchange the private key.

--import [files]

Import the certificates from the PEM or binary encoded files as well as from signed-only messages. This command may also be used to import a secret key from a PKCS#12 file.

--learn-card

Read information about the private keys from the smartcard and import the certificates from there. This command utilizes the gpg-agent and in turn the scdaemon.

--passwd user_id

Change the passphrase of the private key belonging to the certificate specified as user_id. Note, that changing the passphrase/PIN of a smartcard is not yet supported.

GPGSM comes features a bunch ofoptions to control the exact behaviour and to change the default configuration.

These options are used to change the configuraton and are usually found in the option file.

--options file

Reads configuration from file instead of from the default per-user configuration file. The default configuration file is named `gpgsm.conf' and expected in the `.gnupg' directory directly below the home directory of the user.

--homedir dir

Set the name of the home directory to dir. If his option is not used, the home directory defaults to `~/.gnupg'. It is only recognized when given on the command line. It also overrides any home directory stated through the environment variable `GNUPGHOME' or (on W32 systems) by means on the Registry entry HKCU\Software\GNU\GnuPG:HomeDir.

-v

--verbose

Outputs additional information while running. You can increase the verbosity by giving several verbose commands to gpgsm, such as

--policy-file filename

Change the default name of the policy file to filename.

--agent-program file

Specify an agent program to be used for secret key operations. The default value is the `/usr/local/bin/gpg-agent'. This is only used as a fallback when the envrionment variable GPG_AGENT_INFO is not set or a running agent can't be connected.

--dirmngr-program file

Specify a dirmngr program to be used for CRL checks. The default value is `/usr/sbin/dirmngr'. This is only used as a fallback when the environment variable DIRMNGR_INFO is not set or a running dirmngr can't be connected.

--prefer-system-dirmngr

If a system wide dirmngr is running in daemon mode, first try to connect to this one. Fallback to a pipe based server if this does not work.

--no-secmem-warning

Don't print a warning when the so called "secure memory" can't be used.

--log-file file

When running in server mode, append all logging output to file.

--enable-policy-checks

--disable-policy-checks

By default policy checks are enabled. These options may be used to change it.

--enable-crl-checks

--disable-crl-checks

By default the CRL checks are enabled and the DirMngr is used to check for revoked certificates. The disable option is most useful with an off-line network connection to suppress this check.

--enable-trusted-cert-crl-check

--disable-trusted-cert-crl-check

By default the CRL for trusted root certificates are checked like for any other certificates. This allows a CA to revoke its own certificates voluntary without the need of putting all ever issued certificates into a CRL. The disable option may be used to switch this extra check off. Due to the caching done by the Dirmngr, there won't be any noticeable performance gain. Note, that this also disables possible OCSP checks for trusted root certificates. A more specific way of disabling this check is by adding the ``relax'' keyword to the root CA line of the `trustlist.txt'

--force-crl-refresh

Tell the dirmngr to reload the CRL for each request. For better performance, the dirmngr will actually optimize this by suppressing the loading for short time intervalls (e.g. 30 minutes). This option is useful to make sure that a fresh CRL is available for certificates hold in the keybox. The suggested way of doing this is by using it along with the option --with-validation for a key listing command. This option should not be used in a configuration file.

--enable-ocsp

--disable-ocsp

Be default OCSP checks are disabled. The enable opton may be used to enable OCSP checks via Dirmngr. If CRL checks are also enabled, CRLs will be used as a fallback if for some reason an OCSP request won't succeed. Note, that you have to allow OCSP requests in Dirmngr's configuration too (option --allow-ocsp and configure dirmngr properly. If you don't do so you will get the error code t supported'

--armor

-a

Create PEM encoded output. Default is binary output.

--base64

Create Base-64 encoded output; i.e. PEM without the header lines.

--assume-armor

Assume the input data is PEM encoded. Default is to autodetect the encoding but this is may fail.

--assume-base64

Assume the input data is plain base-64 encoded.

--assume-binary

Assume the input data is binary encoded.

--local-user user_id

-u user_id

Set the user(s) to be used for signing. The default is the first secret key found in the database.

--recipient name

-r

Encrypt to the user id name. There are several ways a user id may be given (see: [how-to-specify-a-user-id]).

--output file

-o file

Write output to file. The default is to write it to stdout.

--with-key-data

Displays extra information with the --list-keys commands. Especially a line tagged grp is printed which tells you the keygrip of a key. This string is for example used as the file name of the secret key.

--with-validation

When doing a key listing, do a full validation check for each key and print the result. This is usually a slow operation because it requires a CRL lookup and other operations.

When used along with --import, a validation of the certificate to import is done and only imported if it succeeds the test. Note that this does not affect an already available cwertificate in the DB. This option is therefore useful to simply verify a certificate.

--with-md5-fingerprint

For standard key listings, also print the MD5 fingerprint of the certificate.

--include-certs n

Using n of -2 includes all certificate except for the root cert, -1 includes all certs, 0 does not include any certs, 1 includes only the signers cert (this is the default) and all other positive values include up to n certificates starting with the signer cert.

--cipher-algo oid

Use the cipher algorithm with the ASN.1 object identifier oid for encryption. For convenience the strings 3DES, AES and AES256 may be used instead of their OIDs. The default is 3DES (1.2.840.113549.3.7).

--faked-system-time epoch

This option is only useful for testing; it sets the system time back or forth to epoch which is the number of seconds elapsed since the year 1970.

--with-ephemeral-keys

Include ephemeral flagged keys in the output of key listings.

--debug-level level

Select the debug level for investigating problems. level may be one of:

none

no debugging at all.

basic

some basic debug messages

advanced

more verbose debug messages

expert

even more detailed messages

guru

all of the debug messages you can get

How these messages are mapped to the actual debugging flags is not specified and may change with newer releaes of this program. They are however carefully selected to best aid in debugging.

--debug flags

This option is only useful for debugging and the behaviour may change at any time without notice; using --debug-levels is the preferred method to select the debug verbosity. FLAGS are bit encoded and may be given in usual C-Syntax. The currently defined bits are:

0 (1)

X.509 or OpenPGP protocol related data

1 (2)

values of big number integers

2 (4)

low level crypto operations

5 (32)

memory allocation

6 (64)

caching

7 (128)

show memory statistics.

9 (512)

write hashed data to files named dbgmd-000*

10 (1024)

trace Assuan protocol

Note, that all flags set using this option may get overriden by --debug-level.

--debug-all

Same as --debug=0xffffffff

--debug-allow-core-dump

Usually gpgsm tries to avoid dumping core by well written code and by disabling core dumps for security reasons. However, bugs are pretty durable beasts and to squash them it is sometimes useful to have a core dump. This option enables core dumps unless the Bad Thing happened before the option parsing.

--debug-no-chain-validation

This is actually not a debugging option but only useful as such. It lets gpgsm bypass all certificate chain validation checks.

--debug-ignore-expiration

This is actually not a debugging option but only useful as such. It lets gpgsm ignore all notAfter dates, this is used by the regresssion tests.

--fixed-passphrase string

Supply the passphrase string to the gpg-protect-tool. This option is only useful for the regression tests included with this package and may be revised or removed at any time without notice.

All the long options may also be given in the configuration file after stripping off the two leading dashes.

There are different ways to specify a user ID to GnuPG. Some of them are only valid for gpg others are only good for gpgsm. Here is the entire list of ways to specify a key: