In previous tutorials, we have always worked with command cardano-node,
but when we built the software from source as described here,
we actually installed other executables as well, including the command line interface cardano-cli.
This command line interface provides a collection of tools for key generation, transaction construction, certificate creation and other important tasks.
It is organized in a hierarchy of subcommands, and each level comes with its own built-in documentation of command syntax and options.
We can get the top level help by simply typing the command without arguments:
cardano-cli
We will be told that one available subcommand is shelley, and typing
cardano-cli shelley
will display available sub-subcommands, one of which is node. We can continue drilling down the hierarchy:
cardano-cli shelley node
and learn about the sub-sub-subcommand key-gen. Typing
cardano-cli shelley node key-gen
will inform us about the parameters this command takes, so we can for example generate a key-pair of offline keys and a file for the issue counter by typing
cardano-cli shelley node key-gen \
--verification-key-file mykey.vkey \
--signing-key-file mykey.skey \
--operational-certificate-issue-counter mykey.counter
