# Authentication Commands and Options

| from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll Our resident cryptographer; now you see him, now you don’t.

## 1. Related Links

### 1.1. Authentication Commands and Options

- controlkey - specify control key ID

- keys - specify symmetric keys filename

- trustedkey - specify trusted key IDs

- Command Index

## 2. Commands and Options

Unless noted otherwise, further information about these commands is on the Authentication Support page.

The following declarations control MAC authentication:

`controlkey` key

  Specifies the key identifier to use with the ntpq(1) utility, which uses the standard protocol defined in RFC 5905. The key argument is the key identifier for a trusted key, where the value can be in the range 1 to 65,535, inclusive.

`keys` keyfile

  Specifies the complete path and location of the key file containing the keys and key identifiers used by ntpd(8), and ntpq(1) when operating with symmetric-key cryptography. This is the same operation as the `-k` command line option.

`trustedkey` key…​

  Specifies the key identifiers which are trusted for the purposes of authenticating peers with symmetric key cryptography, as well as keys used by the ntpq(1) program. Multiple keys on the same line should be separated by spaces. Key ranges can be specified as (first …​ last). The spaces around the …​ are necessary. Multiple `trustedkey` lines are supported and trusted keys can also be specified on the command line.

The MAC authentication procedures require that both the local and remote servers share the same key and key identifier for this purpose, although different keys can be used with different servers. The key arguments are 32-bit unsigned integers with values from 1 to 65,535.

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