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P4 CLI Documentation | 2025.2

# p4 trust

Establish trust of an SSL/TLS connection to a Perforce service.

If you have not yet established trust with your server, use the `p4 trust -h` command to get help for the server. You must do this because the command is implemented on the client rather than the server. When a command begins with p4 help, the client forwards it to the server to construct the text of what is displayed on the client machine.

In the case of the trust command, the client might not trust the server to send any commands to it, so the help must begin with `p4 trust` to get it serviced locally by the client rather than have it forwarded to the server.

## Syntax

    p4 [g-opts] trust [-l -y -n -d -f -r] [-i fingerprint]

Syntax and naming conventions

## Description

Use `p4 trust` to manage the `P4TRUST` file. By default, the `.p4trust` is in your home directory. This file establishes and manages the trust of an SSL/TLS connection.

The trust file contains the fingerprints of the keys received for SSL/TLS connections. When you first connect to a P4 service, you are prompted with its fingerprint. If the fingerprint is correct, you can use `p4 trust` to add the service’s fingerprint to your trust file. If the fingerprint changes or expires, subsequent attempts to connect to that service result in warning or error messages.

Your system administrator can help you confirm the accuracy of any fingerprint provided to you by a P4 service.

Only after you have added an SSL/TLS-enabled P4 service to your `P4TRUST` file can you connect to it by setting `P4PORT` to `ssl:`hostname`:`port``.

### SSL/TLS connections that do not require P4TRUST

2021.2 and later: P4TRUST is no longer required for SSL/TLS connections where the server provides a certificate that can be verified using the client’s list of trusted certificate authorities. Servers, proxies, and brokers can send SSL/TLS certificate chains to the client. This happens automatically when multiple certificates are included in the `certificate.txt` file. To learn the requirements of the `certificate.txt` file, see If you are using certificates from a Certificate Authority in the P4 Server Administration Documentation.

## Options

Option | Description
--- | ---
`-d` | Delete an existing trusted fingerprint.
`-f` | Force the replacement of a mismatched fingerprint.
`-i fingerprint` | Install the specified `fingerprint`.
`-l` | List all known fingerprints on this client workstation.
`-n` | Automatically refuse any prompts.
`-r` | List, install, or delete a replacement fingerprint. If a replacement fingerprint exists for the connection, and the primary fingerprint does not match (but the replacement fingerprint does), the replacement fingerprint replaces the primary. This option can be combined with the `-l`, `-i`, or `-d` options.
`-y` | Automatically accept any prompts.
`g-opts` | See Global options.

## Usage notes

Can File Arguments Use Revision Specifier? | Can File Arguments Use Revision Range? | Minimal Access Level Required
--- | --- | ---
N/A | N/A | none because every user can run `p4 trust`, whether a standard user, operator user, or a service user

### Usage notes for SSL/TLS connections that do not require P4TRUST

- Clients based on the 2021.2 C/C++ P4API, and the APIs derived from it, such as P4Python, P4Ruby, and P4Perl, verify the server's SSL/TLS certificate against the local system's CA certificate store and compare the certificate's subjects with the host portion of the P4PORT used by the client. To learn more, see P4 API for C/C++ Documentation.

- If the certificate authority (CA) path is not present in the system's CA store, or if validation against a specific CA is required, the CA path can be specified with the ssl.client.ca.path client-side configurable.

- To revert to the prior `P4TRUST` mechanism, set the ssl.client.cert.validate client-side configurable to `0`.

- To skip the CA validation, and only ensure that the server certificate's subject matches the client's `P4PORT`, set `ssl.client.cert.validate` to `2`.

- The `p4 trust` command can still be used regardless of the server certificate validation, creating `P4TRUST` records for the IP of the server and, if the server's certificate isn't self-signed, also the hostname. The hostname recording can be disabled by setting the ssl.client.trust.name client-side configurable to `0`.

- Setting `ssl.client.trust.name` to `2` prevents `p4 trust` from recording the IP address of the server, but `p4 trust` will still only record hostnames for servers without self-signed certificates.

- Both `ssl.client.trust.name` and `ssl.client.cert.validate` can be set for clients in P4CONFIG files, or passed into the client using `-v` of Global options.

- Proxies and Brokers will accept the configurable as part of P4DEBUG or `-v`.

- `p4 configure set` can be used to apply to all server-to-server SSL/TLS connections. This requires a complete stop and restart of the server for the change to take effect.

- Client-side configuration on servers does not apply to clients connecting to the server.

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