--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. Note 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 file name as additional argument, and it will make dirmngr try to import the CRL in file into its 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 its cache. This is mainly useful for debugging purposes.

--shutdown

This commands shuts down a running instance of dirmngr. This command has currently no effect.

--flush

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

--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 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 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 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 respectively 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 URL. 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.

--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 ommitted, 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 ommitted 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.

--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

Use the certificate with the fingerprint fpr to check the responses of the default OCSP Responder. dirmngr will retrieve this certificate from the current client.

--max-replies N

Do not return more that N items in one query. The default is 10.