SYNOPSIS
dirmngr [options] command [args]
DESCRIPTION
Dirmngr is a server for managing and downloading certificate revocation lists (CRLs) for X.509 certificates and for downloading the certificates themselves. Dirmngr also handles OCSP requests as an alternative to CRLs. Dirmngr is either invoked internally by gpgsm (from GnuPG 2) or when running as a system daemon through the dirmngr-client tool.
COMMANDS
Commands are not distinguished from options execpt for the fact that only one command is allowed.
- --version
-
Print the program version and licensing information. Note that you can
abbreviate this command.
- --help, -h
-
Print a usage message summarizing the most useful command-line options.
Not that you can abbreviate this command.
- --server
-
Run in server mode and wait for commands on the stdin. The
default mode is to create a socket and listen for commands there.
- --daemon
-
Run in background daemon mode and listen for commands on a socket.
Note that this also changes the default home directory and enables the
internal certificate validation code.
- --list-crls
-
List the contents of the CRL cache on stdout. This is probably
only useful for debugging 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 an import the CRL from that url into
it's cache. This is mainly useful 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 corrently no effect.
- --flush
-
This command removes all CRLs from Dirmngr's cache. Client requests
will thus trigger reading of fresh CRLs.
OPTIONS
- --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 depends on the
running mode:
-
- With --daemon given on the commandline
-
the directory named `/etc/dirmngr' for configuration files,
`/var/lib/dirmngr/' for extra data and `/var/cache/dirmngr'
for cached CRLs.
- Without --daemon given on the commandline
- 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. All kind of data is stored below 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.
- --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 keyword.
- 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
-
This option is only useful for debugging and the behaviour may change at
any time without notice. FLAGS are bit encoded and may be given in
usual C-Syntax.
- --debug-all
-
Same as --debug=0xffffffff
- --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.
- -s
- --sh
- -c
- --csh
-
Format the info output in daemon mode for use with the standard Bourne
shell respective the C-shell . The default ist 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 debugging.
- --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 contains 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 entries 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
options overrides the environment 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 (standard 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. Usually 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 instead of the default per-user ldap server list file. The default
value for file is `dirmngr_ldapservers.conf' or
`ldapservers.conf' when running in --daemon mode.
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 orginally 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 allows one to edit this configuration file using percent escaped strings.])
- --ldaptimeout secs
-
Specify the number of seconds to wait for an LDAP query before timing
out. The default is currently 100 seconds. 0 will never timeout.
- --add-servers
-
This options 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 options is useful when trying to validate a certificate that has a CRL distribution 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 information 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. Alternativly a filename can be
given in which case the respinse 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 replaced 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 ignored.
- --ocsp-max-clock-skew n
-
The number of seconds a skew between the OCSP responder and them local
clock is accepted. Default is 600 (20 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.
SIGNALS
A running dirmngr may be controlled by signals, i.e. using the kill command to send a signal to the process.
Here is a list of supported signals:
- SIGHUP
-
This signals 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.
- 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.
- SIGINT
-
Shuts down the process immediately.
- SIGUSR1
-
This prints some caching statistics to the log file.
EXAMPLES
The way to start the dirmngr in the foreground (as done by tools if no dirmngr is running in the background) is to use:
-
dirmngr --server -v
If a dirmngr is supposed to be used as a system wide daemon, it should be started like:
-
dirmngr --daemon
This will force it to go into the backround, read the default certificates (including the trusted root certificates) and listen on a socket for client requests. It does also print information about the socket used but they are only for compatibility reasons with old GnuPG versions and may be ignored.
FILES
Dirmngr makes use of several directories when running in daemon mode:
- /etc/dirmngr
-
This is where all the configuration files are expected by default.
- /etc/dirmngr/trusted-certs
-
This directory should be filled with certificates of Root CAs you are
trusting in checking the CRLS and signing OCSP Reponses. 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.
Note that for OCSP responses the certificate specified using the option --ocsp-signer is always considered valid to sign OCSP requests.
- /var/lib/dirmngr/extra-certs
-
This directory may contain extra certificates which are preloaded into
the interal cache on startup. This is convenient in cases you have a
couple intermediate CA certificates or certificates ususally used to
sign OCSP reponses. 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'.
- /var/run/dirmngr
-
This directory keeps the socket file for accsing dirmngr services.
The name of the socket file will be `socket'. Make sure that this
directory has the proper permissions to let dirmngr create the
socket file and that eligible users may read and write to that socket.
- /var/cache/dirmngr/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.