ssh-pkcs11-helper(8)

ssh-pkcs11-helper8

Openssh helper for pkcs#11 support

Usage

ssh-pkcs11-helper [-v]

Overview

ssh-pkcs11-helper is used by ssh(1), ssh-agent(1), and ssh-keygen(1) to access keys provided by a PKCS#11 token.

ssh-pkcs11-helper is not intended to be invoked directly by the user.

A single option is supported:

-v

Verbose mode. Causes ssh-pkcs11-helper to print debugging messages about its progress. This is helpful in debugging problems. Multiple -v options increase the verbosity. The maximum is 3.

Note that ssh(1), ssh-agent(1), and ssh-keygen(1) will automatically pass the -v flag to ssh-pkcs11-helper when they have themselves been placed in debug mode.

Releases

38 releases since FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE; the text changed 7 times.

  1. 8.1–9.2
  2. 9.3
  3. 10.0–10.2
  4. 10.3–12.3
  5. 12.4
  6. 13.0
  7. 13.1
  8. 13.2–16.0

-v since FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE.

History

ssh-pkcs11-helper first appeared in OpenBSD 4.7.

Authors

Markus Friedl ⟨[email protected]⟩

From base 16.0-CURRENT-20261027-61c70dc16a79 in FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT (2026-10-27). Parsed by carta from the page's mdoc source.