The program keosd, located in the eos/build/programs/keosd folder within the EOSIO/eos repository, can be used to store private keys that cleos will use to sign transactions sent to the block chain. keosd runs on your local machine and stores your private keys locally.
For most users the easiest way to use keosd is to have cleos launch it automatically. Wallet files (named foo.wallet for example) will also be created in this directory by default.
Auto locking
By default keosd is set to auto lock your wallets after 15 minutes of inactivity. This is configurable in the config.ini. Be aware if you need to disable this feature you will have to set an enormous number -- setting it to 0 will cause keosd to always lock your wallet.
Launching keosd manually
It is possible to launch keosd manually simply with
$ keosd
By default, keosd creates the folder ~/eosio-wallet and populates it with a basic config.ini file. The location of the config file can be specified on the command line using the --config-dir argument. The configuration file contains the http server endpoint for incoming http connections and other parameters for cross origin resource sharing. Be aware that if you allowed cleos to auto launch keosd, a config.ini will be generated that will be sightly different than if you had launched keosd manually.
The location of the wallet data folder can be specified on the command line using the --data-dir argument.
Stopping keosd
The most effective way to stop keosd is to find the keosd process and send a SIGTERM signal to it. Note that because cleos auto-launches keosd, it is possible to end up with multiple instances of the keosd running. The following will find and terminate all instances.
$ pkill keosd
Other options
For a full list of possible options you can run keosd --help:
$ keosd --help
Application Options:
Config Options for eosio::http_plugin:
--http-server-address arg (=127.0.0.1:8888)
The local IP and port to listen for
incoming http connections; set blank to
disable.
--https-server-address arg The local IP and port to listen for
incoming https connections; leave blank
to disable.
--https-certificate-chain-file arg Filename with the certificate chain to
present on https connections. PEM
format. Required for https.
--https-private-key-file arg Filename with https private key in PEM
format. Required for https
--access-control-allow-origin arg Specify the Access-Control-Allow-Origin
to be returned on each request.
--access-control-allow-headers arg Specify the Access-Control-Allow-Header
s to be returned on each request.
--access-control-max-age arg Specify the Access-Control-Max-Age to
be returned on each request.
--access-control-allow-credentials Specify if Access-Control-Allow-Credent
ials: true should be returned on each
request.
--max-body-size arg (=1048576) The maximum body size in bytes allowed
for incoming RPC requests
--verbose-http-errors Append the error log to HTTP responses
--http-validate-host arg (=1) If set to false, then any incoming
"Host" header is considered valid
--http-alias arg Additionaly acceptable values for the
"Host" header of incoming HTTP
requests, can be specified multiple
times. Includes http/s_server_address
by default.
Config Options for eosio::wallet_plugin:
--wallet-dir arg (=".") The path of the wallet files (absolute
path or relative to application data
dir)
--unlock-timeout arg (=900) Timeout for unlocked wallet in seconds
(default 900 (15 minutes)). Wallets
will automatically lock after specified
number of seconds of inactivity.
Activity is defined as any wallet
command e.g. list-wallets.
--yubihsm-url URL Override default URL of
http://localhost:12345 for connecting
to yubihsm-connector
--yubihsm-authkey key_num Enables YubiHSM support using given
Authkey
Application Config Options:
--plugin arg Plugin(s) to enable, may be specified
multiple times
Application Command Line Options:
-h [ --help ] Print this help message and exit.
-v [ --version ] Print version information.
--print-default-config Print default configuration template
-d [ --data-dir ] arg Directory containing program runtime
data
--config-dir arg Directory containing configuration
files such as config.ini
-c [ --config ] arg (=config.ini) Configuration file name relative to
config-dir
-l [ --logconf ] arg (=logging.json) Logging configuration file name/path
for library users