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1 | .\" -*-nroff-*- |
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2 | .TH keyring 5 "5 June 1999" "Straylight/Edgeware" "Catacomb cryptographic library" |
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3 | .SH NAME |
4 | keyring \- description of Catacomb keyring files |
5 | .SH DESCRIPTION |
6 | Keyring files are line-oriented text files. It is recommended that |
7 | programs use only the provided interface for reading and modifying |
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8 | keyring files for consistency of locking and representation: this |
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9 | description is provided for the benefit of administrators attempting to |
10 | understand or repair keyring files. |
11 | .PP |
12 | Lines containing only whitespace and lines whose first non-whitespace |
13 | character is |
14 | .RB ` # ' |
15 | are ignored, but are not written back to the file. Thus, the comment |
16 | facility is not particularly useful. |
17 | .PP |
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18 | Each remaining line describes a key. Key descriptions consist of |
19 | between 4 and six whitespace-separated fields. The final comment field |
20 | may contain whitespace characters. The fields are, in order: |
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21 | .TP |
22 | .B type |
23 | The key's type string, set when the key was created. |
24 | .TP |
25 | .B "key data" |
26 | The actual key, Base64 encoded, as described in RFC2045. |
27 | .TP |
28 | .B "expiry time" |
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29 | The time at which this key expires, represented as an integer, in the |
30 | format returned by the |
31 | .BR time (2) |
32 | system call. |
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33 | .TP |
34 | .B "deletion time" |
35 | The time at which this key should be deleted, using the same |
36 | representation as the expiry time. The special value 0 signifies that |
37 | the key should be deleted on expiry. |
38 | .TP |
39 | .B attributes |
40 | The key's attributes, encoded using the `form-urlencoded' encoding |
41 | defined in RFC1866. This field is optional: if it is omitted, the key |
42 | has no attributes. Alternatively, if there are no attributes, this |
43 | field may be given as a single dash |
44 | .RB ` \- '. |
45 | .TP |
46 | .B comment |
47 | The comment field. This field is optional. It may contain whitespace. |
48 | It is deliberately not included as an attribute, since the urlencoded |
49 | nature of attributes makes them hard to read when perusing a keyring |
50 | file. |
51 | .PP |
52 | It is not envisaged that the file format will change in the future. Any |
53 | extensions will be made by defining new attributes. |
54 | .SH AUTHOR |
55 | Mark Wooding, <mdw@nsict.org> |