keyserv(1M)

NAME

/usr/sbin/keyserv − store public and private keys

SYNOPSIS

keyserv [-dkn]

Remarks

The Network Information Service (NIS) was formerly known as Yellow Pages (yp). Although the name has changed, the functionality of the service remains the same.

DESCRIPTION

keyserv is a daemon that stores the private encryption keys of all users logged into the system. These private encryption keys are used to access secure network services such as secure NFS.

When a user logs into the system, the login program uses the login password to decrypt the key that is stored in the Network Information Service (NIS) map, publickey.byname. The decrypted key is then stored in the keyserv daemon.

When the keyserv daemon is started, it normally reads the encryption key for root from the file /etc/.rootkey. This is done to ensure that the secure network services may be started at any time (even when the owner of root is not around to type in the root password), and that these services operate normally.

Options

keyserv supports the following options:

-d Prohibit the use of the default key, nobody. If this option is used, every machine and user within a domain must have a public/private key pair in the NIS map, publickey.byname. Also, new publickeys cannot be created from this host with chkey, but existing keys can be modified (see chkey(1) for more details).

-k Remember key logins across machine reboots. This is only needed if at(1) is used to schedule jobs that require secure RPC. Use of this option is not recommended.

-n Do not read root’s key from /etc/.rootkey. Instead, prompt the user for the password to decrypt root’s key, stored in the NIS service and then store the decrypted key in /etc/.rootkey for future use. This option is useful if the /etc/.rootkey file ever becomes outdated or corrupted.

EXAMPLES

/usr/sbin/keyserv

/usr/sbin/keyserv -n

root password: xxxx

AUTHOR

keyserv was developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc.

FILES

/etc/.rootkey

/etc/keystore

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