SYNOPSIS
tor-gencert [-h|--help] [-v] [-r|--reuse] [--create-identity-key] [-i id_file] [-c cert_file] [-m num] [-a address:port]
DESCRIPTION
tor-gencert generates certificates and private keys for use by Tor
directory authorities running the v3 Tor directory protocol, as used by
Tor 0.2.0 and later. If you are not running a directory authority, you
don’t need to use tor-gencert.
Every directory authority has a long term authority identity key (which
is distinct from the identity key it uses as a Tor server); this key
should be kept offline in a secure location. It is used to certify
shorter-lived signing keys, which are kept online and used by the
directory authority to sign votes and consensus documents.
After you use this program to generate a signing key and a certificate, copy those files to the keys subdirectory of your Tor process, and send Tor a SIGHUP signal. DO NOT COPY THE IDENTITY KEY.
OPTIONS
- -v
-
Display verbose output.
- -h or --help
-
Display help text and exit.
- -r or --reuse
-
Generate a new certificate, but not a new signing key. This can be used to change the address or lifetime associated with a given key.
- --create-identity-key
-
Generate a new identity key. You should only use this option the first time you run tor-gencert; in the future, you should use the identity key that’s already there.
- -i FILENAME
-
Read the identity key from the specified file. If the file is not present and --create-identity-key is provided, create the identity key in the specified file. Default: "./authority_identity_key"
- -s FILENAME
-
Write the signing key to the specified file. Default: "./authority_signing_key"
- -c FILENAME
-
Write the certificate to the specified file. Default: "./authority_certificate"
- -m NUM
-
Number of months that the certificate should be valid. Default: 12.
- --passphrase-fd FILEDES
-
Filedescriptor to read the passphrase from. Ends at the first NUL or newline. Default: read from the terminal.
- -a address:port
-
If provided, advertise the address:port combination as this authority’s preferred directory port in its certificate. If the address is a hostname, the hostname is resolved to an IP before it’s published.
BUGS
This probably doesn’t run on Windows. That’s not a big issue, since we don’t really want authorities to be running on Windows anyway.
SEE ALSO
tor(1)
See also the "dir-spec.txt" file, distributed with Tor.