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<ul id="index">
  <li><a href="#NAME">NAME</a></li>
  <li><a href="#SYNOPSIS">SYNOPSIS</a></li>
  <li><a href="#DESCRIPTION">DESCRIPTION</a></li>
  <li><a href="#OPTIONS">OPTIONS</a>
    <ul>
      <li><a href="#Pass-Phrase-Option-Arguments">Pass Phrase Option Arguments</a></li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li><a href="#COPYRIGHT">COPYRIGHT</a></li>
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<h1 id="NAME">NAME</h1>

<p>openssl-passphrase-options - Pass phrase options</p>

<h1 id="SYNOPSIS">SYNOPSIS</h1>

<p><b>openssl</b> <i>command</i> [ <i>options</i> ... ] [ <i>parameters</i> ... ]</p>

<h1 id="DESCRIPTION">DESCRIPTION</h1>

<p>Several OpenSSL commands accept password arguments, typically using <b>-passin</b> and <b>-passout</b> for input and output passwords respectively. These allow the password to be obtained from a variety of sources. Both of these options take a single argument whose format is described below. If no password argument is given and a password is required then the user is prompted to enter one: this will typically be read from the current terminal with echoing turned off.</p>

<p>Note that character encoding may be relevant, please see <a href="../man7/passphrase-encoding.html">passphrase-encoding(7)</a>.</p>

<h1 id="OPTIONS">OPTIONS</h1>

<h2 id="Pass-Phrase-Option-Arguments">Pass Phrase Option Arguments</h2>

<p>Pass phrase arguments can be formatted as follows.</p>

<dl>

<dt id="pass:password"><b>pass:</b><i>password</i></dt>
<dd>

<p>The actual password is <i>password</i>. Since the password is visible to utilities (like &#39;ps&#39; under Unix) this form should only be used where security is not important.</p>

</dd>
<dt id="env:var"><b>env:</b><i>var</i></dt>
<dd>

<p>Obtain the password from the environment variable <i>var</i>. Since the environment of other processes is visible on certain platforms (e.g. ps under certain Unix OSes) this option should be used with caution.</p>

</dd>
<dt id="file:pathname"><b>file:</b><i>pathname</i></dt>
<dd>

<p>Reads the password from the specified file <i>pathname</i>, which can be a regular file, device, or named pipe. Only the first line, up to the newline character, is read from the stream.</p>

<p>If the same <i>pathname</i> argument is supplied to both <b>-passin</b> and <b>-passout</b> arguments, the first line will be used for the input password, and the next line will be used for the output password.</p>

</dd>
<dt id="fd:number"><b>fd:</b><i>number</i></dt>
<dd>

<p>Reads the password from the file descriptor <i>number</i>. This can be useful for sending data via a pipe, for example. The same line handling as described for <b>file:</b> applies to passwords read from file descriptors.</p>

<p><b>fd:</b> is not supported on Windows.</p>

</dd>
<dt id="stdin"><b>stdin</b></dt>
<dd>

<p>Reads the password from standard input. The same line handling as described for <b>file:</b> applies to passwords read from standard input.</p>

</dd>
</dl>

<h1 id="COPYRIGHT">COPYRIGHT</h1>

<p>Copyright 2000-2024 The OpenSSL Project Authors. All Rights Reserved.</p>

<p>Licensed under the Apache License 2.0 (the &quot;License&quot;). You may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You can obtain a copy in the file LICENSE in the source distribution or at <a href="https://www.openssl.org/source/license.html">https://www.openssl.org/source/license.html</a>.</p>


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