SWANCTL(8)

💖 SWANCTL(8) — the strongSwan era 💖

okay bestie, sit down, we're talking about swanctl, and this is from the strongSwan family, manual section 8. it's giving main character energy in the VPN command-line world, no cap. ✨

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

swanctl command [option ...]

swanctl -h | --help

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

swanctl is a cross-platform command line utility that lets you configure, control and monitor the strongSwan IKE daemon. and the tea? ☕ it's the glow-up replacement for the aging starter, ipsec and stroke tools. like, they were fine, but bestie, they're old.

it reads a config file called swanctl.conf(5) to parse configurations and credentials. private keys, certificates and other PKI related credentials get read from specific directories. very organized, very demure. 🎀

to talk to the IKE daemon, swanctl uses the VICI protocol — the Versatile IKE Configuration Interface. this is a stable interface, which means other tools can use it too, and honestly that's often preferable to scripting swanctl and parsing its output. iykyk. 💅

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🔥 COMMANDS 🔥

one bullet per command, every single one, let's go 💜

• -i, --initiate — initiate a connection 🚀
• -t, --terminate — terminate a connection 💀
• -R, --rekey — rekey an SA 🔄
• -d, --redirect — redirect an IKE_SA 🧭
• -p, --install — install a trap or shunt policy 🪤
• -U, --uninstall — uninstall a trap or shunt policy 🗑️
• -l, --list-sas — list currently active IKE_SAs 📋
• -P, --list-pols — list currently installed policies 📋
• -b, --load-authorities — (re-)load certification authorities information 👑
• -L, --list-conns — list loaded configurations 📋
• -B, --list-authorities — list loaded certification authorities information 👑
• -x, --list-certs — list stored certificates 📜
• -A, --list-pools — list loaded pool configurations 🏊
• -g, --list-algs — list loaded algorithms and their implementation 🧮
• -q, --load-all — (re-)load credentials, pools, authorities and connections 🌈
• -c, --load-conns — (re-)load connection configuration 🔌
• -s, --load-creds — (re-)load credentials 🔑
• -a, --load-pools — (re-)load pool configuration 🏊
• -T, --log — trace logging output (levels 0 and 1 only) 📝
• -S, --stats — show daemon infos and statistics 📊
• -f, --flush-certs — flush cached certificates 🚽
• -r, --reload-settings — reload strongswan.conf(5) configuration ⚙️
• -V, --version — show daemon version information 🏷️
• -h, --help — show usage, version and plugin information 🆘

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✨ GENERAL OPTIONS ✨

• -v, --debug — set debug level, default: 1 🐛
• -+, --options — read command line options from file 📄
• -u, --uri — service URI to connect to 🔗

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

swanctl.conf(5)

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ok that's the whole page bestie, every flag accounted for, nothing skipped, we ate and left no crumbs 🍽️✨

and that's a wrap from the strongSwan era — this one's from strongSwan 6.0.7, dated 2015-11-20. mwah, go configure something iconic 💅🫶