Manual: watchgnupg

WATCHGNUPG(1)					    GNU Privacy Guard 2.4				       WATCHGNUPG(1)

NAME
       watchgnupg - Read and print logs from a socket

SYNOPSIS
       watchgnupg [--force] [--verbose] socketname

DESCRIPTION
       Most  of	 the  main  utilities  are  able  to  write  their log files to a Unix Domain socket if configured that way.
       watchgnupg is a simple listener for such a socket.  It ameliorates the output with a time stamp and makes  sure	that
       long lines are not interspersed with log output from other utilities.  This tool is not available for Windows.

       watchgnupg is commonly invoked as

	 watchgnupg

       which is a shorthand for

	 watchgnupg --force $(gpgconf --list-dirs socketdir)/S.log

       To watch GnuPG running with a different home directory, use

	 watchgnupg --homedir DIR

OPTIONS
       watchgnupg understands these options:

       --force
	      Delete  an  already  existing socket file.  This option is implicitly used if no socket name has been given on
	      the command line.

       --homedir DIR
	      If no socket name is given on the command line, pass DIR to gpgconf so that the socket  for  a  GnuPG  running
	      with  DIR	 has  its  home	 directory  is	used.	Note  that  the environment variable GNUPGHOME is ignored by
	      watchgnupg.

       --tcp n
	      Instead of reading from a local socket, listen for connects on TCP port n.  A Unix domain socket	can  option‐
	      ally also be given as a second source.  This option does not use a default socket name.

       --time-only
	      Do not print the date part of the timestamp.

       --verbose
	      Enable extra informational output.

       --version
	      Print version of the program and exit.

       --help Display a brief help page and exit.

EXAMPLES
	 $ watchgnupg --time-only

       This waits for connections on the local socket (e.g. ‘/var/run/user/1234/gnupg/S.log’) and shows all log entries.  To
       make this work the option log-file needs to be used with all modules which logs are to be shown.	 The suggested entry
       for the configuration files is:

	 log-file socket://

       If  the	default socket as given above and returned by "echo $(gpgconf –list-dirs socketdir)/S.log" is not desired an
       arbitrary socket name can be specified, for example ‘socket:///home/foo/bar/mysocket’.  For debugging purposes it  is
       also  possible  to do remote logging.  Take care if you use this feature because the information is send in the clear
       over the network.  Use this syntax in the conf files:

	 log-file tcp://192.168.1.1:4711

       You may use any port and not just 4711 as shown above; only IP addresses are supported (v4 and v6) and no host names.
       You need to start  watchgnupg  with  the	 tcp  option.	Note  that  under  Windows  the	 registry  entry  HKCU\Soft‐
       ware\GNU\GnuPG:DefaultLogFile  can  be used to change the default log output from stderr to whatever is given by that
       entry.  However the only useful entry is a TCP name for remote debugging.

SEE ALSO
       gpg(1), gpgsm(1), gpg-agent(1), scdaemon(1)

       The full documentation for this tool is maintained as a Texinfo manual.	If GnuPG and the info program  are  properly
       installed at your site, the command

	 info gnupg

       should give you access to the complete manual including a menu structure and an index.

GnuPG 2.4.8						 2025-02-19					       WATCHGNUPG(1)