xenial (7) session-keyring.7.gz

NAME

       session-keyring - Session shared process keyring

DESCRIPTION

       The  session keyring is a keyring used to anchor keys on behalf of a process.  It is typically created by
       the pam_keyinit module when a user logs in and a link will be added that refers to the user keyring.

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

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

       A  process's  session  keyring  is  inherited  across  clone(), fork() and vfork() and is retained across
       execve() - even when the target executable is setuid or setgid.  The session keyring  will  be  destroyed
       when the last process that refers to it exits.

       If  a  process doesn't have a session keyring when it is accessed, then, under certain circumstances, the
       user session keyring will be attached as the session keyring and under others a new session keyring  will
       be created.

SPECIAL OPERATIONS

       The keyutils library provides a number of special operations for manipulating session keyrings:

       keyctl_join_session_keyring()
              This operation allows the caller to change their session keyring.  The caller can join an existing
              keyring by name, create a new keyring of the name given or ask the kernel to create a new  session
              keyring with the name "_ses".

       keyctl_session_to_parent()
              This  operation allows the caller to set the parent process's session keyring to the same as their
              own.  For this to succeed, the parent process must have identical security attributes and must  be
              single threaded.

       These operations are also exposed through the keyctl utility as:

              keyctl session
              keyctl session - [<prog> <arg1> <arg2> ...]
              keyctl session <name> [<prog> <arg1> <arg2> ...]

       and:

              keyctl new_session

SEE ALSO

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