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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 file descriptor 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.

AUTHORS

Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>, Nick Mathewson <nickm@alum.mit.edu>.

AUTHOR

Nick Mathewson
Author.
04/06/2015 Tor