gpg-preset-passphrase1

Usage

Overview

The gpg-preset-passphrase is a utility to seed the internal cache of a running gpg-agent with passphrases. It is mainly useful for unattended machines, where the usual pinentry tool may not be used and the passphrases for the to be used keys are given at machine startup.

This program works with GnuPG 2 and later. GnuPG 1.x is not supported.

Passphrases set with this utility don't expire unless the --forget option is used to explicitly clear them from the cache — or gpg-agent is either restarted or reloaded (by sending a SIGHUP to it). Note that the maximum cache time as set with --max-cache-ttl is still honored. It is necessary to allow this passphrase presetting by starting gpg-agent with the --allow-preset-passphrase.

gpg-preset-passphrase is invoked this way:

gpg-preset-passphrase [options] [command] cacheid

cacheid is either a 40 character keygrip of hexadecimal characters identifying the key for which the passphrase should be set or cleared. The keygrip is listed along with the key when running the command: gpgsm --with-keygrip --list-secret-keys. Alternatively an arbitrary string may be used to identify a passphrase; it is suggested that such a string is prefixed with the name of the application (e.g foo:12346). Scripts should always use the option --with-colons, which provides the keygrip in a "grp" line (cf. ‘doc/DETAILS’)/

One of the following command options must be given:

--preset

Preset a passphrase. This is what you usually will use. gpg-preset-passphrase will then read the passphrase from stdin.

--forget

Flush the passphrase for the given cache ID from the cache.

The following additional options may be used:

-v
--verbose

Output additional information while running.

-P string
--passphrase string

Instead of reading the passphrase from stdin, use the supplied string as passphrase. Note that this makes the passphrase visible for other users.