I have a knot.conf file with the following keystore section: keystore: - id: TheBackend backend: pkcs11 config: "pkcs11:model=p11-kit-trust;manufacturer=PKCS%2311%20Kit;serial=1;token=System Trust" where the value assigned to the config keyword is obtained from the output from the GnuTLS p11tool command: $ p11tool --list-tokens Token 0: URL: pkcs11:model=p11-kit-trust;manufacturer=PKCS%2311%20Kit;serial=1;token=System%20Trust Label: System Trust Type: Trust module Flags: uPIN uninitialized Manufacturer: PKCS#11 Kit Model: p11-kit-trust Serial: 1 Module: p11-kit-trust.so Also in knot.conf I have policy: - id: manual manual: on zone: - domain: example.com storage: /var/lib/knot/zones/ file: example.com.zone dnssec-signing: on dnssec-policy: manual With all this in place, I launched the following from the CLI: # keymgr example.com. generate algorithm=ECDSAP256SHA256 This does not seem to be using the PKCS #11 library, as instructed in knot.conf. I debugged the command above and noticed that, at some before the signing operation itself is addressed, the keystore_load function from the Knot code base is invoked. This function takes several arguments, the second of which is a backend identifier. According to the keystore entry in knot.conf, this should be the PKCS #11 identifier KEYSTORE_BACKEND_PKCS11. However, what I see with the debugger is that the backend argument is, in fact, KEYSTORE_BACKEND_PEM. Even more intriguing (to somebody unfamiliar with the internal workings of Knot, at least) is that, before keystore_load is invoked, the check_keystore function is invoked and it evaluates the following conditional: if (conf_opt(&backend) == KEYSTORE_BACKEND_PKCS11 && conf_str(&config) == NULL) This conditional clearly succeeds - i.e. at that point the backend has been correctly identified as PKCS #11. But, like I said above, when keystore_load gets called later on, such is not the case any longer. Any idea as to what is going on here? Why is PKCS #11 not being used? In the config string above in knot.conf I tried replacing %23 and %20 with # and the space character, respectively. It made no difference. This all is happening with Knot 2.7.3.