This manual page is for Mac OS X version 10.6.3

Reading manual pages

DSAPARAM(1)                                        OpenSSL                                       DSAPARAM(1)



NAME
       dsaparam - DSA parameter manipulation and generation

SYNOPSIS
       openssl dsaparam [-inform DER|PEM] [-outform DER|PEM] [-in filename] [-out filename] [-noout] [-text]
       [-C] [-rand file(s)] [-genkey] [-engine id] [numbits]

DESCRIPTION
       This command is used to manipulate or generate DSA parameter files.

OPTIONS
       -inform DER|PEM
           This specifies the input format. The DER option uses an ASN1 DER encoded form compatible with
           RFC2459 (PKIX) DSS-Parms that is a SEQUENCE consisting of p, q and g respectively. The PEM form
           is the default format: it consists of the DER format base64 encoded with additional header and
           footer lines.

       -outform DER|PEM
           This specifies the output format, the options have the same meaning as the -inform option.

       -in filename
           This specifies the input filename to read parameters from or standard input if this option is not
           specified. If the numbits parameter is included then this option will be ignored.

       -out filename
           This specifies the output filename parameters to. Standard output is used if this option is not
           present. The output filename should not be the same as the input filename.

       -noout
           this option inhibits the output of the encoded version of the parameters.

       -text
           this option prints out the DSA parameters in human readable form.

       -C  this option converts the parameters into C code. The parameters can then be loaded by calling the
           get_dsaXXX() function.

       -genkey
           this option will generate a DSA either using the specified or generated parameters.

       -rand file(s)
           a file or files containing random data used to seed the random number generator, or an EGD socket
           (see RAND_egd(3)).  Multiple files can be specified separated by a OS-dependent character.  The
           separator is ; for MS-Windows, , for OpenVMS, and : for all others.

       numbits
           this option specifies that a parameter set should be generated of size numbits. It must be the
           last option. If this option is included then the input file (if any) is ignored.

       -engine id
           specifying an engine (by it's unique id string) will cause req to attempt to obtain a functional
           reference to the specified engine, thus initialising it if needed. The engine will then be set as
           the default for all available algorithms.

NOTES
       PEM format DSA parameters use the header and footer lines:

        -----BEGIN DSA PARAMETERS----------END PARAMETERS---------END
        -----END DSA PARAMETERS-----DSA PARAMETERS----DSA

       DSA parameter generation is a slow process and as a result the same set of DSA parameters is often
       used to generate several distinct keys.

SEE ALSO
       gendsa(1), dsa(1), genrsa(1), rsa(1)



0.9.8                                            2003-01-30                                      DSAPARAM(1)