rand(1ssl)

rand1ssl

Openssl application commands

Part of openssl-cmds(1ssl).

Usage

openssl {cmd -help | [{-option | -option arg}] ... [arg] ...}

Overview

Every cmd listed above is a (sub-)command of the openssl(1) application. It has its own detailed manual page at openssl-cmd(1). For example, to view the manual page for the openssl dgst command, type "man openssl-dgst".

Options

Among others, every subcommand has a help option.

-help

Print out a usage message for the subcommand.

Releases

13 releases since Debian 3.0 (Woody); the text changed 12 times.

  1. 3.0
  2. 3.1
  3. 4.0
  4. 5.0
  5. 6.0
  6. 7
  7. 8
  8. 9
  9. 10
  10. 11
  11. 12
  12. 13
  13. Arch

-help since Debian 9 (Stretch).

-base64 until Debian 11 (Bullseye); -hex until Debian 11 (Bullseye); -out until Debian 11 (Bullseye); -rand until Debian 11 (Bullseye).

History

Initially, the manual page entry for the "openssl cmd" command used to be available at cmd(1). Later, the alias openssl-cmd(1) was introduced, which made it easier to group the openssl commands using the apropos(1) command or the shell's tab completion.

In order to reduce cluttering of the global manual page namespace, the manual page entries without the 'openssl-' prefix have been deprecated in OpenSSL 3.0 and will be removed in OpenSSL 4.0.

From openssl 3.6.5-1 in Arch Linux 2026-11-01. Parsed by carta from the page's man source.