SIGNIFY(1)

💖 SIGNIFY(1) 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the signify page from the General Commands Manual — yes it's a real section of the manual, and yes it's giving main character energy 🌟

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✨ NAME ✨

signify — cryptographically sign and verify files 🔐

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

signify -C [-q] [-p pubkey] [-t keytype] -x sigfile [file ...]
signify -G [-n] [-c comment] -p pubkey -s seckey
signify -S [-enz] [-x sigfile] -s seckey -m message
signify -V [-eqz] [-p pubkey] [-t keytype] [-x sigfile] -m message

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

signify is the utility that creates and verifies cryptographic signatures. A signature verifies the integrity of a message — so like, if somebody touched your file, the signature is gonna know, periodt 💅

You pick the mode of operation with these options:

• -C — Verify a signed checksum list, and then verify the checksum for each file. If you don't specify any files, all of them get checked. The sigfile should be the signed output of sha256(1). 🧾
• -G — Generate a new key pair. Keynames should follow the convention of keyname.pub and keyname.sec for the public and secret keys, respectively. 🔑✨
• -S — Sign the specified message file and create a signature. ✍️
• -V — Verify the message and signature match. ✅

The other options are as follows:

• -c comment — Specify the comment to be added during key generation. 💬
• -e — When signing, embed the message after the signature. When verifying, extract the message from the signature. (This requires that the signature was created using -e and creates a new message file as output.) 📦
• -m message — When signing, the file containing the message to sign. When verifying, the file containing the message to verify. When verifying with -e, the file to create. 📄
• -n — When generating a key pair, do not ask for a passphrase. Otherwise, signify will prompt the user for a passphrase to protect the secret key. When signing with -z, store a zero time stamp in the gzip(1) header. 🙈
• -p pubkey — Public key produced by -G, and used by -V to check a signature. 🔓
• -q — Quiet mode. Suppress informational output. 🤫
• -s seckey — Secret (private) key produced by -G, and used by -S to sign a message. 🔒
• -t keytype — When deducing the correct key to check a signature, make sure the actual key matches /etc/signify/*-keytype.pub. 🎯
• -x sigfile — The signature file to create or verify. The default is message.sig. 🗂️
• -z — Sign and verify gzip(1) archives, where the signing data is embedded in the gzip(1) header. 🗜️

💫 the file format tea 💫

The key and signature files created by signify have the same format. The first line of the file is a free form text comment that may be edited, so long as it does not exceed a single line. Signature comments will be generated based on the name of the secret key used for signing. This comment can then be used as a hint for the name of the public key when verifying. The second line of the file is the actual key or signature base64 encoded. 🧬

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🔥 EXIT STATUS 🔥

The signify utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs. It may fail because of one of the following reasons:

• Some necessary files do not exist. 😭
• Entered passphrase is incorrect. 🙃
• The message file was corrupted and its signature does not match. 💀
• The message file is too large. 🐘

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🎀 EXAMPLES 🎀

Create a new key pair:

$ signify -G -p newkey.pub -s newkey.sec

Sign a file, specifying a signature name:

$ signify -S -s key.sec -m message.txt -x msg.sig

Verify a signature, using the default signature name:

$ signify -V -p key.pub -m generalsorders.txt

Verify a release directory containing SHA256.sig and a full set of release files:

$ signify -C -p /etc/signify/openbsd-80-base.pub -x SHA256.sig

Verify a bsd.rd before an upgrade:

$ signify -C -p /etc/signify/openbsd-80-base.pub -x SHA256.sig bsd.rd

Sign a gzip archive:

$ signify -Sz -s key-arc.sec -m in.tgz -x out.tgz

Verify a gzip pipeline:

$ ftp url | signify -Vz -t arc | tar ztf -

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

gzip(1), pkg_add(1), sha256(1), fw_update(8), sysupgrade(8)

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👑 HISTORY 👑

The signify command first appeared in OpenBSD 5.5. 🕰️

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🫶 AUTHORS 🫶

Ted Unangst <tedu@openbsd.org> and Marc Espie <espie@openbsd.org>.

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and that's the whole page, bestie — this one came from the Debian build, dated March 11, 2026, so if you're citing it, that's the version and date you're working with 💖✨ go forth and verify your files, no cap 🦋