NAME

       user-keyring - per-user keyring

DESCRIPTION

       The  user  keyring  is  a  keyring  used to anchor keys on behalf of a user.  Each UID the
       kernel deals with has its own user keyring that is shared by all processes with that  UID.
       The  user  keyring has a name (description) of the form _uid.<UID> where <UID> is the user
       ID of the corresponding user.

       The user keyring is associated with the record that the kernel maintains for the UID.   It
       comes  into  existence  upon  the  first  attempt  to  access either the user keyring, the
       user-session-keyring(7),  or  the  session-keyring(7).   The  keyring  remains  pinned  in
       existence  so  long  as  there are processes running with that real UID or files opened by
       those processes remain open.  (The keyring can also be pinned indefinitely by  linking  it
       into another keyring.)

       Typically, the user keyring is created by pam_keyinit(8) when a user logs in.

       The  user  keyring  is  not  searched  by  default by request_key(2).  When pam_keyinit(8)
       creates a session keyring, it adds to it a link to the  user  keyring  so  that  the  user
       keyring will be searched when the session keyring is.

       A  special serial number value, KEY_SPEC_USER_KEYRING, is defined that can be used in lieu
       of the actual serial number of the calling process's user keyring.

       From the keyctl(1) utility, '@u' can be used instead of a numeric key ID in much the  same
       way.

       User  keyrings  are  independent  of  clone(2), fork(2), vfork(2), execve(2), and _exit(2)
       excepting that the keyring is destroyed when the UID record is  destroyed  when  the  last
       process pinning it exits.

       If  it  is necessary for a key associated with a user to exist beyond the UID record being
       garbage collected—for example, for use by a cron(8) script—then the  persistent-keyring(7)
       should be used instead.

       If a user keyring does not exist when it is accessed, it will be created.

SEE ALSO

       keyctl(1), keyctl(3), keyrings(7), persistent-keyring(7), process-keyring(7),
       session-keyring(7), thread-keyring(7), user-session-keyring(7), pam_keyinit(8)

COLOPHON

       This page is part of release 5.13 of the Linux man-pages project.  A description of the
       project, information about reporting bugs, and the latest version of this page, can be
       found at https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.