RAZOR-ADMIN(1)

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version 2.88 · 10 versions
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💅 razor-admin(1) — the glow-up ✨

okay so first things first: this is a page from the User Contributed Perl Documentation set, and the star of the show is razor-admin, bestie. buckle up 🎀

🌸 NAME 🌸

razor-admin — the Razor Registering Agent. literally the admin-y one 🫶

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

razor-admin [options]  [ -register | -create | -discover ]

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

razor-admin is the Razor Agent that handles the administrative stuff — and most importantly, registering (-register). it's giving backstage-pass energy 👑

🦋 USAGE 🦋

razor-admin must have one of these arguments, no exceptions, periodt:

  • -register — registers a new identity, which is what you use to authenticate with the Razor Nomination Servers. an identity is a user + password pair stored in <razorhome>/identity-<user>. the first time razor-admin -register exits successfully, a symlink called identity gets created pointing at the active identity-<user> file. after that you can totally make new identities, but to actually use one you gotta repoint the identity symlink at it, iykyk. honestly? just call it once from the command line and move on. exits 0 for success, exits 1 on failure with a human-readable output message 💀

so here's the tea: both razor-report(1) and razor-revoke(1) need user authentication to work — razor-check(1) does not. that's how the Razor Nomination Server keeps track of how many messages a user reports and revokes. the more messages a user correctly reports and/or correctly revokes, the more trust that user earns. and likewise, when messages get incorrectly reported or revoked, that user's trust goes down. highly trusted users have the most affect on the Razor database — main character energy fr fr 🌟

  • -discover — forces discovery. this creates server.*.lst files in <razorhome>. cute little files, slay 🔍
  • -create — explicitly creates the razor-agent.conf file in <razorhome>, and also <razorhome> itself if it doesn't already exist. normally it loads /etc/razor/razor-agent.conf if that exists, using defaults for anything it doesn't find. it does not attempt to register with the server, but it will do discovery — see -discover above 👀

💅 OPTIONS 💅

razor-admin takes the following optional arguments:

  • -h — print a usage message and exit.
  • -v — print the version number and exit.
  • -d | --verbose — print debugging information. yes bestie, show us everything 🐛
  • -debuglevel=n | -dl=n — set the debug level to n. default is 3 without the -d option, and 9 with it.
  • -s — simulate a check. do everything except talk to the server. fake it till you make it 🎭
  • -conf=filename — specifies an alternate configuration file. if you don't specify one, it's computed — see the razor-agents(1) manpage for the details. and see the razor-agent.conf(5) manpage for the various configuration options. the default is <razorhome>/razor-agent.conf.
  • -home=directory — specify the razorhome directory. this is where the configuration file, logfiles, identities, and server files live. if not specified, it's computed — see razor-agents(1) for the details. 🏠
  • -logfile=file — specify a file to log to instead of whatever's in the configuration file. the default is <razorhome>/razor-agent.log.
  • -ident=filename — specify an identity file to use for storing a newly registered identity. if not specified, <razorhome>/identity-<user> is used.
  • -rs=razor.server.com — use this Razor Nomination Server instead of reading servers.nomination.lst.
  • -user=user@domain.com — request to be known as this username. must be less than 64 chars and may contain A-Z, a-z, 0-9, as well printable chars [ex: - _ @ . + / ]. if not specified, a username will be assigned. Razor users are encouraged to use their email addresses as their usernames. 📧
  • -pass=password — request this password. valid chars are the same as for -user. if not specified, it will be assigned. 🔐
  • -l — the identity created during this razor-admin run becomes the default. normally, the first identity file created by razor-admin is the default one used.

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

  • razor-admin -d -create — with no global razorhome defined (that's the default) in /etc/razor/razor-agents.conf, this creates the .razor directory in the user's home directory. but with a global razorhome defined in /etc/razor/razor-agents.conf, it'll try to use that one instead — and it will fail if that one doesn't have the correct permissions 👀
  • razor-admin -register — registers a new identity, storing it in <lt>razorhome<gt>. the user and pass will be server generated. an identity is required for razor-report(1) and razor-revoke(1) 🫡
  • razor-admin -register -user me@a.com — attempts to register a new identity using the username 'me\@a.com'. will fail if that user is already taken. no stealing, bestie 🙈
  • razor-admin -d -create -home=/home/me/.razor — creates the .razor directory in the user's home directory, which then becomes the default home unless you specify otherwise from the cmd-line. sends debugging information to stdout, and does not talk to any Razor Servers 🧚
  • razor-admin -d -create -home=/etc/razor — creates the global razorhome, /etc/razor. this is the magic directory that gets consulted if no razorhome is specified on the cmd-line or found in the user's home directory ✨

👑 AUTHORS 👑

Vipul Ved Prakash <mail@vipul.net>, and Chad Norwood <chad@samo.org> — legends, honestly 💜

🍓 SEE ALSO 🍓

razor-agents(1), razor-agent.conf(5), razor-check(1), razor-report(1), razor-revoke(1), razor-whitelist(5)

⭐ LICENSE ⭐

This is free software, distributed under the Artistic License 2.0. iconic behavior 🎀

and that's the whole page, bestie — brought to you by perl v5.44.0, dated 2026-10-17. mwah 💋 RAZOR-ADMIN(1) forever 🦋

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