NAME

       process-keyring - per-process shared keyring

DESCRIPTION

       The  process  keyring  is  a  keyring  used  to anchor keys on behalf of a process.  It is
       created only when a process requests it.  The process keyring has the  name  (description)
       _pid.

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

       From the keyctl(1) utility, '@p' can be used instead of a numeric key ID in much the  same
       way, but since keyctl(1) is a program run after forking, this is of no utility.

       A  thread created using the clone(2) CLONE_THREAD flag has the same process keyring as the
       caller of clone(2).  When a new process is  created  using  fork()  it  initially  has  no
       process  keyring.   A  process's  process  keyring  is  cleared on execve(2).  The process
       keyring is destroyed when the last thread that refers to it terminates.

       If a process doesn't have a process keyring when it is accessed, then the process  keyring
       will be created if the keyring is to be modified; otherwise, the error ENOKEY results.

SEE ALSO

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