For any SIG records that are in the key set, the start time when the SIG records become valid is specified with the -s option. start-time can either be an absolute or relative date. An absolute start time is indicated by a number in YYYYMMDDHHMMSS notation: 20000530144500 denotes 14:45:00 UTC on May 30th, 2000. A relative start time is supplied when start-time is given as +N: N seconds from the current time. If no -s option is supplied, the current date and time is used for the start time of the SIG records.
The expiry date for the SIG records can be set by the -e option. Note that in this context, the expiry date specifies when the SIG records are no longer valid, not when they are deleted from caches on name servers. end-date also represents an absolute or relative date. YYYYMMDDHHMMSS notation is used as before to indicate an absolute date and time. When end-date is +N, it indicates that the SIG records will expire in N seconds after their start date. If end-date is written as now+N, the SIG records will expire in N seconds after the current time. When no expiry date is set for the SIG records, dnssec-makekeyset defaults to an expire time of 30 days from the start time of the SIG records.
An alternate source of random data can be specified with the -r option. randomdev is the name of the file to use to obtain random data. By default /dev/random is used if this device is available. If it is not provided by the operating system and no -r option is used, dnssec-makekeyset will prompt the user for input from the keyboard and use the time between keystrokes to derive some random data.
The -p option instructs dnssec-makekeyset to use pseudo-random data when self-signing the keyset. This is faster, but less secure, than using genuinely random data for signing. This option may be useful when the entropy source is limited.
The -t option is followed by a time-to-live argument TTL which indicates the TTL value that will be assigned to the assembled KEY and SIG records in the output file. TTL is expressed in seconds. If no -t option is provided, dnssec-makekeyset prints a warning and uses a default TTL of 3600 seconds.
The -v option can be used to make dnssec-makekeyset more verbose. As the debugging/tracing level level increases, dnssec-makekeyset generates increasingly detailed reports about what it is doing. The default level is zero.
The -h option makes dnssec-makekeyset to print a short summary of its options and arguments.
If dnssec-makekeyset is successful, it creates a file name of the form keyset-nnnn. . This file contains the KEY and SIG records for domain nnnn , the domain name part from the key file identifier produced when dnssec-keygen created the domain's public and private keys. The keyset file can then be transferred to the DNS administrator of the parent zone for them to sign the contents with dnssec-signkey(1Mtcp).
# dnssec-makekeyset -t 86400 -s 20000701120000 -e +2592000 Kexample.com.+003+26160
dnssec-makekeyset will create a file called keyset-example.com. containing a SIG and KEY record for example.com. These records will have a TTL of 86400 seconds (1 day). The SIG record becomes valid at noon UTC on July 1st 2000 and expires 30 days (2592000 seconds) later.
The DNS administrator for example.com could then send keyset-example.com. to the DNS administrator for .com so that they could sign the resource records in the file. This assumes that the .com zone is DNSSEC-aware and the administrators of the two zones have some mechanism for authenticating each other and exchanging the keys and signatures securely.