SESSION KEYRING(7) Kernel key management SESSION KEYRING(7)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 exe‐
cutable 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 manip‐
ulating 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, cre‐
ate 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 ALSOkeyctl(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)Linux 19 Feb 2014 SESSION KEYRING(7)