DOKK / manpages / debian 11 / strongswan-starter / ipsec.8.en
IPSEC(8) strongSwan IPSEC(8)

ipsec - invoke IPsec utilities

ipsec command [arguments] [options]

The ipsec utility invokes any of several utilities involved in controlling and monitoring the IPsec encryption/authentication system, running the specified command with the specified arguments and options as if it had been invoked directly. This largely eliminates possible name collisions with other software, and also permits some centralized services.

All the commands described in this manual page are built-in and are used to control and monitor IPsec connections as well as the IKE daemon.

For other commands ipsec supplies the invoked command with a suitable PATH environment variable, and also provides the environment variables listed under ENVIRONMENT.

calls starter which in turn parses ipsec.conf and starts the IKE daemon charon.
sends a HUP signal to starter which in turn determines any changes in ipsec.conf and updates the configuration on the running IKE daemon charon.
sends a USR1 signal to starter which in turn reloads the whole configuration of the running IKE daemon charon based on the actual ipsec.conf.
is equivalent to stop followed by start after a guard of 2 seconds.
terminates all IPsec connections and stops the IKE daemon charon by sending a TERM signal to starter.
tells the IKE daemon to start up connection name.
tells the IKE daemon to terminate connection name.
terminates IKEv1 Quick Mode and IKEv2 CHILD SA instance n of connection name.
terminates all IKEv1 Quick Mode and IKEv2 CHILD SA instances of connection name.
terminates IKE SA instance n of connection name.
terminates all IKE SA instances of connection name.
terminates all IKE SA instances with clients having virtual IPs in the range start-end.
tells the IKE daemon to insert an IPsec policy in the kernel for connection name. The first payload packet matching the IPsec policy will automatically trigger an IKE connection setup.
remove the IPsec policy in the kernel for connection name.
returns concise status information either on connection name or if the argument is lacking, on all connections.
returns detailed status information either on connection name or if the argument is lacking, on all connections.

returns the status of all or the selected IP address pool (or even a single virtual IP address).
returns a list supported cryptographic algorithms usable for IKE, and their corresponding plugin.
returns a list of RSA public keys that were either loaded in raw key format or extracted from X.509 and|or OpenPGP certificates.
returns a list of X.509 and|or OpenPGP certificates that were either loaded locally by the IKE daemon or received via the IKE protocol.
returns a list of X.509 Certification Authority (CA) certificates that were loaded locally by the IKE daemon from the /etc/ipsec.d/cacerts/ directory or received via the IKE protocol.
returns a list of X.509 Authorization Authority (AA) certificates that were loaded locally by the IKE daemon from the /etc/ipsec.d/aacerts/ directory.
returns a list of X.509 OCSP Signer certificates that were either loaded locally by the IKE daemon from the /etc/ipsec.d/ocspcerts/ directory or were sent by an OCSP server.
returns a list of X.509 Attribute certificates that were loaded locally by the IKE daemon from the /etc/ipsec.d/acerts/ directory.
returns a list of groups that are used to define user authorization profiles.
returns certification authority information (CRL distribution points, OCSP URIs, LDAP servers) that were defined by ca sections in ipsec.conf.
returns a list of Certificate Revocation Lists (CRLs) that were either loaded by the IKE daemon from the /etc/ipsec.d/crls directory or fetched from an HTTP- or LDAP-based CRL distribution point.
returns revocation information fetched from OCSP servers.
returns a list of all loaded plugin features.
returns a list of global or connection specific IKE counter values collected since daemon startup.
returns all information generated by the list commands above. Each list command can be called with the --utc option which displays all dates in UTC instead of local time.

flushes and rereads all secrets defined in ipsec.secrets.
removes previously loaded CA certificates, reads all certificate files contained in the /etc/ipsec.d/cacerts directory and adds them to the list of Certification Authority (CA) certificates. This does not affect certificates explicitly defined in a ipsec.conf(5) ca section, which may be separately updated using the update command.
removes previously loaded AA certificates, reads all certificate files contained in the /etc/ipsec.d/aacerts directory and adds them to the list of Authorization Authority (AA) certificates.
reads all certificate files contained in the /etc/ipsec.d/ocspcerts/ directory and adds them to the list of OCSP signer certificates.
reads all certificate files contained in the /etc/ipsec.d/acerts/ directory and adds them to the list of attribute certificates.
reads all Certificate Revocation Lists (CRLs) contained in the /etc/ipsec.d/crls/ directory and adds them to the list of CRLs.
executes all reread commands listed above.

resets global or connection specific counters.

purges all cached certificates.
purges all cached CRLs.
purges IKE SAs that don't have a Quick Mode or CHILD SA.
purges all cached OCSP information records.

returns the usage information for the ipsec command.
returns the version in the form of Linux strongSwan U<strongSwan userland version>/K<Linux kernel version> if strongSwan uses the native NETKEY IPsec stack of the Linux kernel it is running on.
returns the version number in the form of U<strongSwan userland version>/K<Linux kernel version> if strongSwan uses the native NETKEY IPsec stack of the Linux kernel it is running on.
returns the copyright information.
returns the LIBEXECDIR directory as defined by the configure options.
returns the SYSCONFDIR directory as defined by the configure options.
returns the PIDDIR directory as defined by the configure options.

/usr/libexec/ipsec utilities directory

When calling other commands the ipsec command supplies the following environment variables.

IPSEC_DIR               directory containing ipsec programs and utilities
IPSEC_BINDIR            directory containing pki command
IPSEC_SBINDIR           directory containing ipsec command
IPSEC_CONFDIR           directory containing configuration files
IPSEC_PIDDIR            directory containing PID/socket files
IPSEC_SCRIPT            name of the ipsec script
IPSEC_NAME              name of ipsec distribution
IPSEC_VERSION           version number of ipsec userland and kernel
IPSEC_STARTER_PID       PID file for ipsec starter
IPSEC_CHARON_PID        PID file for IKE keying daemon

ipsec.conf(5), ipsec.secrets(5)

Originally written for the FreeS/WAN project by Henry Spencer. Updated and extended for the strongSwan project <http://www.strongswan.org> by Tobias Brunner and Andreas Steffen.

2013-10-29 5.7.2dr1