NAME | DESCRIPTION | NOTES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

PERSISTENT-KEYRING(7)     Linux Programmer's Manual    PERSISTENT-KEYRING(7)

NAME         top

       persistent-keyring - per-user persistent keyring

DESCRIPTION         top

       The persistent keyring is a keyring used to anchor keys on behalf of
       a user.  Each UID the kernel deals with has its own persistent
       keyring that is shared between all threads owned by that UID.  The
       persistent keyring has a name (description) of the form
       _persistent.<UID> where <UID> is the user ID of the corresponding
       user.
       The persistent keyring may not be accessed directly, even by
       processes with the appropriate UID.  Instead, it must first be linked
       to one of a process's keyrings, before that keyring can access the
       persistent keyring by virtue of its possessor permits.  This linking
       is done with the keyctl_get_persistent(3) function.
       If a persistent keyring does not exist when it is accessed by the
       keyctl_get_persistent(3) operation, it will be automatically created.
       Each time the keyctl_get_persistent(3) operation is performed, the
       persistent key's expiration timer is reset to the value in:
           /proc/sys/kernel/keys/persistent_keyring_expiry
       Should the timeout be reached, the persistent keyring will be removed
       and everything it pins can then be garbage collected.  The key will
       then be re-created on a subsequent call to keyctl_get_persistent(3).
       The persistent keyring is not directly searched by request_key(2); it
       is searched only if it is linked into one of the keyrings that is
       searched by request_key(2).
       The persistent keyring is independent of clone(2), fork(2), vfork(2),
       execve(2), and _exit(2).  It persists until its expiration timer
       triggers, at which point it is garbage collected.  This allows the
       persistent keyring to carry keys beyond the life of the kernel's
       record of the corresponding UID (the destruction of which results in
       the destruction of the user-keyring(7) and the
       user-session-keyring(7)).  The persistent keyring can thus be used to
       hold authentication tokens for processes that run without user
       interaction, such as programs started by cron(8).
       The persistent keyring is used to store UID-specific objects that
       themselves have limited lifetimes (e.g., kerberos tokens).  If those
       tokens cease to be used (i.e., the persistent keyring is not
       accessed), then the timeout of the persistent keyring ensures that
       the corresponding objects are automatically discarded.
   Special operations
       The keyutils library provides the keyctl_get_persistent(3) function
       for manipulating persistent keyrings.  (This function is an interface
       to the keyctl(2) KEYCTL_GET_PERSISTENT operation.)  This operation
       allows the calling thread to get the persistent keyring corresponding
       to its own UID or, if the thread has the CAP_SETUID capability, the
       persistent keyring corresponding to some other UID in the same user
       namespace.

NOTES         top

       Each user namespace owns a keyring called .persistent_register that
       contains links to all of the persistent keys in that namespace.  (The
       .persistent_register keyring can be seen when reading the contents of
       the /proc/keys file for the UID 0 in the namespace.)  The
       keyctl_get_persistent(3) operation looks for a key with a name of the
       form _persistent.<UID> in that keyring, creates the key if it does
       not exist, and links it into the keyring.

SEE ALSO         top

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

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of release 4.12 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/.
Linux                            2017-03-13            PERSISTENT-KEYRING(7)

Pages that refer to this page: add_key(2)keyctl(2)request_key(2)keyctl_get_persistent(3)keyrings(7)keyutils(7)process-keyring(7)session-keyring(7)thread-keyring(7)user-keyring(7)user-session-keyring(7)