Phil Zimmermann's PGP How to use PGP

Obtained by executing `pgp -h ' - HTML not included

Here's a quick summary of PGP v2.6 commands.

To encrypt a plaintext file with the recipient's public key:
pgp -e textfile her_userid

To sign a plaintext file with your secret key:
pgp -s textfile [-u your_userid]

To sign a plaintext file with your secret key and have the output readable to people without running PGP first:
pgp -sta textfile [-u your_userid]

To sign a plaintext file with your secret key, and then encrypt it with the recipient's public key:
pgp -es textfile her_userid [-u your_userid]

To encrypt a plaintext file with just conventional cryptography, type:
pgp -c textfile

To decrypt an encrypted file, or to check the signature integrity of a signed file:
pgp ciphertextfile [-o plaintextfile]

To encrypt a message for any number of multiple recipients:
pgp -e textfile userid1 userid2 userid3

Key management commands

To generate your own unique public/secret key pair:
pgp -kg

To add a public or secret key file's contents to your public or secret key ring:
pgp -ka keyfile [keyring]

To extract (copy) a key from your public or secret key ring:
pgp -kx userid keyfile [keyring]
pgp -kxa userid keyfile [keyring]

To view the contents of your public key ring:
pgp -kv[v] [userid] [keyring]

To view the "fingerprint" of a public key, to help verify it over the telephone with its owner:
pgp -kvc [userid] [keyring]

To view the contents and check the certifying signatures of your public key ring:
pgp -kc [userid] [keyring]

To edit the userid or pass phrase for your secret key:
pgp -ke userid [keyring]

To edit the trust parameters for a public key:
pgp -ke userid [keyring]

To remove a key or just a userid from your public key ring:
pgp -kr userid [keyring]

To sign and certify someone else's public key on your public key ring:
pgp -ks her_userid [-u your_userid] [keyring]

To remove selected signatures from a userid on a keyring:
pgp -krs userid [keyring]

To permanently revoke your own key, issuing a key compromise certificate:
pgp -kd your_userid

To disable or reenable a public key on your own public key ring:
pgp -kd userid

Esoteric commands

To decrypt a message and leave the signature on it intact:
pgp -d ciphertextfile

To create a signature certificate that is detached from the document:
pgp -sb textfile [-u your_userid]

To detach a signature certificate from a signed message:
pgp -b ciphertextfile

Not included in the help, but esoteric all the same
Turn on unnecessary prompting (useful for non-interactive scripts)
pgp +batchmode

Force PGP to overwrite file names
pgp +force

Enter pass phrase on command line
pgp -z "you really shouldn't ought to do this"

Command options that can be used in combination with other command options (sometimes even spelling interesting words!)

To produce a ciphertext file in ASCII radix-64 format, just add the -a option when encrypting or signing a message or extracting a key:
pgp -sea textfile her_userid
pgp -kxa userid keyfile [keyring]

To wipe out the plaintext file after producing the ciphertext file, just add the -w (wipe) option when encrypting or signing a message:
pgp -sew message.txt her_userid

To specify that a plaintext file contains ASCII text, not binary, and should be converted to recipient's local text line conventions, add the -t (text) option to other options:
pgp -seat message.txt her_userid

To view the decrypted plaintext output on your screen (like the Unix-style "more" command), without writing it to a file, use the -m (more) option while decrypting:
pgp -m ciphertextfile

To specify that the recipient's decrypted plaintext will be shown ONLY on her screen and cannot be saved to disk, add the -m option:
pgp -steam message.txt her_userid

To recover the original plaintext filename while decrypting, add the -p option:
pgp -p ciphertextfile

To use a Unix-style filter mode, reading from standard input and writing to standard output, add the -f option:
pgp -feast her_userid outputfile

More advanced usage examples.

Last Modified: 17 July 1996