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TOR-GENCERT(1) Tor Manual TOR-GENCERT(1) NAME tor-gencert - Generate certs and keys for Tor directory authorities 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. AUTHOR Tor Project, Inc. Author. Tor 03/24/2025 TOR-GENCERT(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | BUGS | SEE ALSO | AUTHOR
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