dirmngr-client(1)

dirmngr-client1

Tool to access the dirmngr services

Usage

dirmngr-client [options] [{certfile | pattern}]

Overview

The dirmngr-client is a simple tool to contact a running dirmngr and test whether a certificate has been revoked — either by being listed in the corresponding CRL or by running the OCSP protocol. If no dirmngr is running, a new instances will be started but this is in general not a good idea due to the huge performance overhead.

The usual way to run this tool is either:

dirmngr-client acert

or

dirmngr-client <acert

Where acert is one DER encoded (binary) X.509 certificates to be tested.

Return value

dirmngr-client returns these values:

0

The certificate under question is valid; i.e. there is a valid CRL available and it is not listed there or the OCSP request returned that that certificate is valid.

1

The certificate has been revoked

2 (and other values)

There was a problem checking the revocation state of the certificate. A message to stderr has given more detailed information. Most likely this is due to a missing or expired CRL or due to a network problem.

Options

dirmngr-client may be called with the following options:

--version

Print the program version and licensing information. Note that you cannot abbreviate this command.

--help, -h

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

--quiet, -q

Make the output extra brief by suppressing any informational messages.

-v
--verbose

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

--pem

Assume that the given certificate is in PEM (armored) format.

--ocsp

Do the check using the OCSP protocol and ignore any CRLs.

--force-default-responder

When checking using the OCSP protocol, force the use of the default OCSP responder. That is not to use the Reponder as given by the certificate.

--ping

Check whether the dirmngr daemon is up and running.

--cache-cert

Put the given certificate into the cache of a running dirmngr. This is mainly useful for debugging.

--validate

Validate the given certificate using dirmngr's internal validation code. This is mainly useful for debugging.

--load-crl

This command expects a list of filenames with DER encoded CRL files. With the option --url URLs are expected in place of filenames and they are loaded directly from the given location. All CRLs will be validated and then loaded into dirmngr's cache.

--lookup

Take the remaining arguments and run a lookup command on each of them. The results are Base-64 encoded outputs (without header lines). This may be used to retrieve certificates from a server. However the output format is not very well suited if more than one certificate is returned.

--url
-u

Modify the lookup and load-crl commands to take an URL.

--local
-l

Let the lookup command only search the local cache.

--squid-mode

Run dirmngr-client in a mode suitable as a helper program for Squid's external_acl_type option.

Releases

12 releases since Debian 3.1 (Sarge); the text changed 11 times.

  1. 3.1
  2. 4.0
  3. 5.0
  4. 6.0
  5. 7
  6. 8
  7. 9
  8. 10
  9. 11
  10. 12
  11. 13
  12. Arch

--force-default-responder since Debian 5.0 (Lenny); --local since Debian 6.0 (Squeeze); --url since Debian 6.0 (Squeeze); -l since Debian 6.0 (Squeeze); -u since Debian 6.0 (Squeeze).

From gnupg 2.4.9-4 in Arch Linux 2026-11-01. Parsed by carta from the page's man source.