user-session-keyring - per-user default session keyring
The user session keyring is a keyring used to anchor keys on behalf of a user.
Each UID the kernel deals with has its own user session keyring that is shared
by all processes with that UID. The user session keyring has a name
(description) of the form
_uid_ses.<UID> where
<UID>
is the user ID of the corresponding user.
The user session keyring is associated with the record that the kernel maintains
for the UID. It comes into existence upon the first attempt to access either
the user session keyring, the
user-keyring(7), or the
session-keyring(7). The keyring remains pinned in existence so long as
there are processes running with that real UID or files opened by those
processes remain open. (The keyring can also be pinned indefinitely by linking
it into another keyring.)
The user session keyring is created on demand when a thread requests it or when
a thread asks for its
session-keyring(7) and that keyring doesn't
exist. In the latter case, a user session keyring will be created and, if the
session keyring wasn't to be created, the user session keyring will be set as
the process's actual session keyring.
The user session keyring is searched by
request_key(2) if the actual
session keyring does not exist and is ignored otherwise.
A special serial number value,
KEY_SPEC_USER_SESSION_KEYRING, is defined
that can be used in lieu of the actual serial number of the calling process's
user session keyring.
From the
keyctl(1) utility, '
@us' can be used instead of a
numeric key ID in much the same way.
User session keyrings are independent of
clone(2),
fork(2),
vfork(2),
execve(2), and
_exit(2) excepting that the
keyring is destroyed when the UID record is destroyed when the last process
pinning it exits.
If a user session keyring does not exist when it is accessed, it will be
created.
Rather than relying on the user session keyring, it is strongly
recommended—especially if the process is running as root—that a
session-keyring(7) be set explicitly, for example by
pam_keyinit(8).
The user session keyring was added to support situations where a process doesn't
have a session keyring, perhaps because it was created via a pathway that
didn't involve PAM (e.g., perhaps it was a daemon started by
inetd(8)).
In such a scenario, the user session keyring acts as a substitute for the
session-keyring(7).
keyctl(1),
keyctl(3),
keyrings(7),
persistent-keyring(7),
process-keyring(7),
session-keyring(7),
thread-keyring(7),
user-keyring(7)