dirmngr(8) - phpMan

DIRMNGR(8) GNU Privacy Guard 2.2 DIRMNGR(8)

NAME
dirmngr - CRL and OCSP daemon

SYNOPSIS
dirmngr [options] command [args]

DESCRIPTION
Since version 2.1 of GnuPG, dirmngr takes care of accessing the OpenPGP keyservers. As
with previous versions it is also used as a server for managing and downloading certifi-
cate revocation lists (CRLs) for X.509 certificates, downloading X.509 certificates, and
providing access to OCSP providers. Dirmngr is invoked internally by gpg, gpgsm, or via
the gpg-connect-agent tool.

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

--version
Print the program version and licensing information. Note that you cannot abbrevi-
ate this command.

--help, -h
Print a usage message summarizing the most useful command-line options. Note that
you cannot abbreviate this command.

--dump-options
Print a list of all available options and commands. Note that you cannot abbrevi-
ate this command.

--server
Run in server mode and wait for commands on the stdin. The default mode is to cre-
ate a socket and listen for commands there. This is only used for testing.

--daemon
Run in background daemon mode and listen for commands on a socket. This is the way
dirmngr is started on demand by the other GnuPG components. To force starting
dirmngr it is in general best to use gpgconf --launch dirmngr.

--supervised
Run in the foreground, sending logs to stderr, and listening on file descriptor 3,
which must already be bound to a listening socket. This is useful when running un-
der systemd or other similar process supervision schemes. This option is not sup-
ported on Windows.

--list-crls
List the contents of the CRL cache on stdout. This is probably only useful for de-
bugging purposes.

--load-crl file
This command requires a filename as additional argument, and it will make Dirmngr
try to import the CRL in file into it's cache. Note, that this is only possible if
Dirmngr is able to retrieve the CA's certificate directly by its own means. In
general it is better to use gpgsm's --call-dirmngr loadcrl filename command so that
gpgsm can help dirmngr.

--fetch-crl url
This command requires an URL as additional argument, and it will make dirmngr try
to retrieve and import the CRL from that url into it's cache. This is mainly use-
ful for debugging purposes. The dirmngr-client provides the same feature for a
running dirmngr.

--shutdown
This commands shuts down an running instance of Dirmngr. This command has cur-
rently no effect.

--flush
This command removes all CRLs from Dirmngr's cache. Client requests will thus
trigger reading of fresh CRLs.

OPTIONS
Note that all long options with the exception of --options and --homedir may also be given
in the configuration file after stripping off the two leading dashes.

--options file
Reads configuration from file instead of from the default per-user configuration
file. The default configuration file is named 'dirmngr.conf' and expected in the
home directory.

--homedir dir
Set the name of the home directory to dir. This option is only effective when used
on the command line. The default is the directory named '.gnupg' directly below
the home directory of the user unless the environment variable GNUPGHOME has been
set in which case its value will be used. Many kinds of data are stored within
this directory.

-v

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

--log-file file
Append all logging output to file. This is very helpful in seeing what the agent
actually does. Use 'socket://' to log to socket.

--debug-level level
Select the debug level for investigating problems. level may be a numeric value or
by a keyword:

none No debugging at all. A value of less than 1 may be used instead of the key-
word.

basic Some basic debug messages. A value between 1 and 2 may be used instead of
the keyword.

advanced
More verbose debug messages. A value between 3 and 5 may be used instead of
the keyword.

expert Even more detailed messages. A value between 6 and 8 may be used instead of
the keyword.

guru All of the debug messages you can get. A value greater than 8 may be used
instead of the keyword. The creation of hash tracing files is only enabled
if the keyword is used.

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

--debug flags
Set debugging flags. This option is only useful for debugging and its behavior may
change with a new release. All flags are or-ed and may be given in C syntax (e.g.
0x0042) or as a comma separated list of flag names. To get a list of all supported
flags the single word "help" can be used.

--debug-all
Same as --debug=0xffffffff

--tls-debug level
Enable debugging of the TLS layer at level. The details of the debug level depend
on the used TLS library and are not set in stone.

--debug-wait n
When running in server mode, wait n seconds before entering the actual processing
loop and print the pid. This gives time to attach a debugger.

--disable-check-own-socket
On some platforms dirmngr is able to detect the removal of its socket file and
shutdown itself. This option disable this self-test for debugging purposes.

-s
--sh
-c
--csh Format the info output in daemon mode for use with the standard Bourne shell re-
spective the C-shell. The default is to guess it based on the environment variable
SHELL which is in almost all cases sufficient.

--force
Enabling this option forces loading of expired CRLs; this is only useful for debug-
ging.

--use-tor
--no-use-tor
The option --use-tor switches Dirmngr and thus GnuPG into ``Tor mode'' to route all
network access via Tor (an anonymity network). Certain other features are disabled
in this mode. The effect of --use-tor cannot be overridden by any other command or
even by reloading dirmngr. The use of --no-use-tor disables the use of Tor. The
default is to use Tor if it is available on startup or after reloading dirmngr.

--standard-resolver
This option forces the use of the system's standard DNS resolver code. This is
mainly used for debugging. Note that on Windows a standard resolver is not used
and all DNS access will return the error ``Not Implemented'' if this option is
used. Using this together with enabled Tor mode returns the error ``Not Enabled''.

--recursive-resolver
When possible use a recursive resolver instead of a stub resolver.

--resolver-timeout n
Set the timeout for the DNS resolver to N seconds. The default are 30 seconds.

--connect-timeout n

--connect-quick-timeout n
Set the timeout for HTTP and generic TCP connection attempts to N seconds. The
value set with the quick variant is used when the --quick option has been given to
certain Assuan commands. The quick value is capped at the value of the regular
connect timeout. The default values are 15 and 2 seconds. Note that the timeout
values are for each connection attempt; the connection code will attempt to connect
all addresses listed for a server.

--listen-backlog n
Set the size of the queue for pending connections. The default is 64.

--allow-version-check
Allow Dirmngr to connect to https://versions.gnupg.org to get the list of current
software versions. On debian-packaged versions, this option does nothing since
software updates should be handled by the distribution. See the option --query-
swdb of the command gpgconf for more details. Note, that regardless of this option
a version check can always be triggered using this command:

gpg-connect-agent --dirmngr 'loadswdb --force' /bye

--keyserver name
Use name as your keyserver. This is the server that gpg communicates with to re-
ceive keys, send keys, and search for keys. The format of the name is a URI:
`scheme:[//]keyservername[:port]' The scheme is the type of keyserver: "hkp" for
the HTTP (or compatible) keyservers, "ldap" for the LDAP keyservers, or "mailto"
for the Graff email keyserver. Note that your particular installation of GnuPG may
have other keyserver types available as well. Keyserver schemes are case-insensi-
tive. After the keyserver name, optional keyserver configuration options may be
provided. These are the same as the --keyserver-options of gpg, but apply only to
this particular keyserver.

Most keyservers synchronize with each other, so there is generally no need to send
keys to more than one server. The keyserver hkp://keys.gnupg.net uses round robin
DNS to give a different keyserver each time you use it.

If exactly two keyservers are configured and only one is a Tor hidden service
(.onion), Dirmngr selects the keyserver to use depending on whether Tor is locally
running or not. The check for a running Tor is done for each new connection.

If no keyserver is explicitly configured, dirmngr will use the built-in default of
hkps://keys.openpgp.org.

Note that the above default is a Debian-specific choice. Upstream GnuPG prefers
hkps://hkps.pool.sks-keyservers.net. See /usr/share/doc/gpgconf/NEWS.Debian.gz for
more details.

Windows users with a keyserver running on their Active Directory should use
ldap:/// for name to access this directory.

For accessing anonymous LDAP keyservers name is in general just a ldaps://ldap.ex-
ample.com. A BaseDN parameter should never be specified. If authentication is re-
quired the value of name is for example:

keyserver ldaps://ldap.example.com/????bindname=uid=USERNAME
%2Cou=GnuPG%20Users%2Cdc=example%2Cdc=com,password=PASSWORD

Put this all on one line without any spaces and keep the '%2C' as given.
Replace USERNAME, PASSWORD, and the 'dc' parts according to the
instructions received from the LDAP administrator. Note that only
simple authentication (i.e. cleartext passwords) is supported and thus
using ldaps is strongly suggested.

--nameserver ipaddr
In ``Tor mode'' Dirmngr uses a public resolver via Tor to resolve DNS names. If
the default public resolver, which is 8.8.8.8, shall not be used a different one
can be given using this option. Note that a numerical IP address must be given
(IPv6 or IPv4) and that no error checking is done for ipaddr.

--disable-ipv4

--disable-ipv6
Disable the use of all IPv4 or IPv6 addresses.

--disable-ldap
Entirely disables the use of LDAP.

--disable-http
Entirely disables the use of HTTP.

--ignore-http-dp
When looking for the location of a CRL, the to be tested certificate usually con-
tains so called CRL Distribution Point (DP) entries which are URLs describing the
way to access the CRL. The first found DP entry is used. With this option all en-
tries using the HTTP scheme are ignored when looking for a suitable DP.

--ignore-ldap-dp
This is similar to --ignore-http-dp but ignores entries using the LDAP scheme.
Both options may be combined resulting in ignoring DPs entirely.

--ignore-ocsp-service-url
Ignore all OCSP URLs contained in the certificate. The effect is to force the use
of the default responder.

--honor-http-proxy
If the environment variable 'http_proxy' has been set, use its value to access HTTP
servers.

--http-proxy host[:port]
Use host and port to access HTTP servers. The use of this option overrides the en-
vironment variable 'http_proxy' regardless whether --honor-http-proxy has been set.

--ldap-proxy host[:port]
Use host and port to connect to LDAP servers. If port is omitted, port 389 (stan-
dard LDAP port) is used. This overrides any specified host and port part in a LDAP
URL and will also be used if host and port have been omitted from the URL.

--only-ldap-proxy
Never use anything else but the LDAP "proxy" as configured with --ldap-proxy. Usu-
ally dirmngr tries to use other configured LDAP server if the connection using the
"proxy" failed.

--ldapserverlist-file file
Read the list of LDAP servers to consult for CRLs and certificates from file in-
stead of the default per-user ldap server list file. The default value for file is
'dirmngr_ldapservers.conf'.

This server list file contains one LDAP server per line in the format

hostname:port:username:password:base_dn

Lines starting with a '#' are comments.

Note that as usual all strings entered are expected to be UTF-8 encoded. Obviously
this will lead to problems if the password has originally been encoded as Latin-1.
There is no other solution here than to put such a password in the binary encoding
into the file (i.e. non-ascii characters won't show up readable). ([The gpgconf
tool might be helpful for frontends as it enables editing this configuration file
using percent-escaped strings.])

--ldaptimeout secs
Specify the number of seconds to wait for an LDAP query before timing out. The de-
fault are 15 seconds. 0 will never timeout.

--add-servers
This option makes dirmngr add any servers it discovers when validating certificates
against CRLs to the internal list of servers to consult for certificates and CRLs.

This option is useful when trying to validate a certificate that has a CRL distri-
bution point that points to a server that is not already listed in the
ldapserverlist. Dirmngr will always go to this server and try to download the CRL,
but chances are high that the certificate used to sign the CRL is located on the
same server. So if dirmngr doesn't add that new server to list, it will often not
be able to verify the signature of the CRL unless the --add-servers option is used.

Note: The current version of dirmngr has this option disabled by default.

--allow-ocsp
This option enables OCSP support if requested by the client.

OCSP requests are rejected by default because they may violate the privacy of the
user; for example it is possible to track the time when a user is reading a mail.

--ocsp-responder url
Use url as the default OCSP Responder if the certificate does not contain informa-
tion about an assigned responder. Note, that --ocsp-signer must also be set to a
valid certificate.

--ocsp-signer fpr|file
Use the certificate with the fingerprint fpr to check the responses of the default
OCSP Responder. Alternatively a filename can be given in which case the response
is expected to be signed by one of the certificates described in that file. Any
argument which contains a slash, dot or tilde is considered a filename. Usual
filename expansion takes place: A tilde at the start followed by a slash is re-
placed by the content of 'HOME', no slash at start describes a relative filename
which will be searched at the home directory. To make sure that the file is
searched in the home directory, either prepend the name with "./" or use a name
which contains a dot.

If a response has been signed by a certificate described by these fingerprints no
further check upon the validity of this certificate is done.

The format of the FILE is a list of SHA-1 fingerprint, one per line with optional
colons between the bytes. Empty lines and lines prefix with a hash mark are ig-
nored.

--ocsp-max-clock-skew n
The number of seconds a skew between the OCSP responder and them local clock is ac-
cepted. Default is 600 (10 minutes).

--ocsp-max-period n
Seconds a response is at maximum considered valid after the time given in the
thisUpdate field. Default is 7776000 (90 days).

--ocsp-current-period n
The number of seconds an OCSP response is considered valid after the time given in
the NEXT_UPDATE datum. Default is 10800 (3 hours).

--max-replies n
Do not return more that n items in one query. The default is 10.

--ignore-cert-extension oid
Add oid to the list of ignored certificate extensions. The oid is expected to be
in dotted decimal form, like 2.5.29.3. This option may be used more than once.
Critical flagged certificate extensions matching one of the OIDs in the list are
treated as if they are actually handled and thus the certificate won't be rejected
due to an unknown critical extension. Use this option with care because extensions
are usually flagged as critical for a reason.

--hkp-cacert file
Use the root certificates in file for verification of the TLS certificates used
with hkps (keyserver access over TLS). If the file is in PEM format a suffix of
.pem is expected for file. This option may be given multiple times to add more
root certificates. Tilde expansion is supported.

If no hkp-cacert directive is present, dirmngr will make a reasonable choice: if
the keyserver in question is the special pool hkps.pool.sks-keyservers.net, it will
use the bundled root certificate for that pool. Otherwise, it will use the system
CAs.

EXAMPLES
Here is an example on how to show dirmngr's internal table of OpenPGP keyserver addresses.
The output is intended for debugging purposes and not part of a defined API.

gpg-connect-agent --dirmngr 'keyserver --hosttable' /bye

To inhibit the use of a particular host you have noticed in one of the keyserver pools,
you may use

gpg-connect-agent --dirmngr 'keyserver --dead pgpkeys.bnd.de' /bye

The description of the keyserver command can be printed using

gpg-connect-agent --dirmngr 'help keyserver' /bye

FILES
Dirmngr makes use of several directories when running in daemon mode: There are a few con-
figuration files whih control the operation of dirmngr. By default they may all be found
in the current home directory (see: [option --homedir]).

dirmngr.conf
This is the standard configuration file read by dirmngr on startup. It may contain
any valid long option; the leading two dashes may not be entered and the option may
not be abbreviated. This file is also read after a SIGHUP however not all options
will actually have an effect. This default name may be changed on the command line
(see: [option --options]). You should backup this file.

/etc/gnupg/trusted-certs
This directory should be filled with certificates of Root CAs you are trusting in
checking the CRLs and signing OCSP Responses.

Usually these are the same certificates you use with the applications making use of
dirmngr. It is expected that each of these certificate files contain exactly one
DER encoded certificate in a file with the suffix '.crt' or '.der'. dirmngr reads
those certificates on startup and when given a SIGHUP. Certificates which are not
readable or do not make up a proper X.509 certificate are ignored; see the log file
for details.

Applications using dirmngr (e.g. gpgsm) can request these certificates to complete
a trust chain in the same way as with the extra-certs directory (see below).

Note that for OCSP responses the certificate specified using the option --ocsp-
signer is always considered valid to sign OCSP requests.

/etc/gnupg/extra-certs
This directory may contain extra certificates which are preloaded into the internal
cache on startup. Applications using dirmngr (e.g. gpgsm) can request cached cer-
tificates to complete a trust chain. This is convenient in cases you have a couple
intermediate CA certificates or certificates usually used to sign OCSP responses.
These certificates are first tried before going out to the net to look for them.
These certificates must also be DER encoded and suffixed with '.crt' or '.der'.

~/.gnupg/crls.d
This directory is used to store cached CRLs. The 'crls.d' part will be created by
dirmngr if it does not exists but you need to make sure that the upper directory
exists.

SIGNALS
A running dirmngr may be controlled by signals, i.e. using the kill command to send a sig-
nal to the process.

Here is a list of supported signals:

SIGHUP This signal flushes all internally cached CRLs as well as any cached certificates.
Then the certificate cache is reinitialized as on startup. Options are re-read
from the configuration file. Instead of sending this signal it is better to use
gpgconf --reload dirmngr

SIGTERM
Shuts down the process but waits until all current requests are fulfilled. If the
process has received 3 of these signals and requests are still pending, a shutdown
is forced. You may also use
gpgconf --kill dirmngr
instead of this signal

SIGINT Shuts down the process immediately.

SIGUSR1
This prints some caching statistics to the log file.