Portecle

Portecle is a user friendly GUI application for creating, managing and examining keystores, keys, certificates, certificate requests, certificate revocation lists and more.

Currently, Portecle can be used to, for example:

Create, load, save, and convert keystores.
Generate DSA and RSA key pair entries with self-signed X.509 certificates.
Import X.509 certificate files as trusted certificates.
Import key pairs from PKCS #12 files.
Clone and change the password of key pair entries and keystores.
View the details of certificates contained within keystore entries, certificate files, and SSL/TLS connections.
Export keystore entries in a variety of formats.
Generate and view certification requests (CSRs).
Import Certificate Authority (CA) replies.
Change the password of key pair entries and keystores.
Delete, clone, and rename keystore entries.
View the details of certificate revocation list (CRL) files.

Getting up and running with Portecle is quick and easy. Everything you need to know is detailed below. Being written in Java, Portecle will run on any machine that has a suitable Java runtime environment installed.

You can access the online help of Portecle from within the Portecle GUI, or online at http://portecle.sourceforge.net/#docs

Installing

First, you'll need a suitable Java runtime environment installed. Java SE version 7 or later is required; see for example https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/index.html and https://openjdk.java.net/ for available versions and install instructions.

Apart from Java, the default binary distribution of Portecle contains everything you'll need to run it. The easiest way to install it is to unzip the binary distribution to a directory somewhere on your filesystem.

The binary distribution contains the Portecle jar file (portecle.jar) as well as Bouncy Castle provider and PKIX jars (bcprov.jar, bcpkix.jar) for Java SE 7. If you wish to run Portecle with a later Java version, or update the bundled Bouncy Castle jars for some other reason, simply download an update for your version of Java from https://www.bouncycastle.org/ and place the jars into the same directory as portecle.jar with the names bcprov.jar and bcpkix.jar, overwriting the existing one already there (if any). The binary distribution also contains icons for use with Portecle.

Portecle can additionally use the GNU Classpath (version 0.90 or later) security providers if they are installed. Support for GNU Keyring (GKR) keystores requires these providers. For more information about GNU Classpath, see https://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/

Depending on your Portecle usage patterns, the Bouncy Castle provider may require the JCE unlimited strength jurisdiction policy files installed to function properly. See "IMPORTANT NOTES" at https://www.bouncycastle.org/documentation.html. Failures related to lack of these policy files usually manifest themselves as errors loading keystores with an error message like "Unsupported keysize or algorithm parameters" or "Illegal key size" when trying to import keys.

The default way of running Portecle uses the java -jar method, which means that the Class-Path defined in portecle.jar's MANIFEST.MF will be used to locate all classes. You can also invoke Portecle by its "main" class, net.sf.portecle.FPortecle. This method allows you to use a Bouncy Castle provider jar elsewhere on your filesystem.

The following chapters contain examples how to run Portecle; all of the examples assume that the JRE/JDK bin directory has been added to your PATH environment variable.

Windows Command Line

Assuming you have an appropriate JRE/JDK installed and have placed the Portecle and Bouncy Castle provider JAR files into a directory c:\java you can run Portecle like so:

java -jar c:\java\portecle.jar

In most setups, if portecle.jar, bcprov.jar, and bcpkix.jar were installed as instructed above, Portecle can also be run by double-clicking portecle.jar in the Windows Explorer.

If you wish to manage the jar locations yourself, use Java's -cp option for that, and net.sf.portecle.FPortecle as the class to launch.

UNIX Command Line

Assuming you have an appropriate JRE/JDK installed and have placed the Portecle and Bouncy Castle provider jar files into a directory /usr/share/java you can run Portecle like so:

java -jar /usr/share/java/portecle.jar

If you wish to manage the jar locations yourself, use Java's -cp option for that, and net.sf.portecle.FPortecle as the class to launch.

Experimental Features

Portecle releases may contain experimental features that are not enabled by default. These have known limitations or incomplete implementations that make them unsuitable for production use, but they may be valuable for early adopters. To enable these features, use -Dportecle.experimental=true in your Portecle invocation command line. See the file NEWS.txt for information about status of current experimental features.

Copyright and License

Portecle is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

Portecle is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with Portecle, see the file LICENSE.txt; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA

Contact

For contact information and issue tracking facilities, see Portecle's project pages at: