git.distorted.org.uk Git - u/mdw/catacomb/blob - keyring.5

   1 .\" -*-nroff-*-
   2 .TH keyring 5 "5 June 1999" Catacomb
   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
   8 keyring files for consistency of locking and representation: this
   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
  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:
  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"
  29 The time at which this key expires, represented as an integer number of
  30 seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC, not counting leap seconds.  The
  31 special value \-1 signifies that this key never expires.
  32 .TP
  33 .B "deletion time"
  34 The time at which this key should be deleted, using the same
  35 representation as the expiry time.  The special value 0 signifies that
  36 the key should be deleted on expiry.
  37 .TP
  38 .B attributes
  39 The key's attributes, encoded using the `form-urlencoded' encoding
  40 defined in RFC1866.  This field is optional: if it is omitted, the key
  41 has no attributes.  Alternatively, if there are no attributes, this
  42 field may be given as a single dash
  43 .RB ` \- '.
  44 .TP
  45 .B comment
  46 The comment field.  This field is optional.  It may contain whitespace.
  47 It is deliberately not included as an attribute, since the urlencoded
  48 nature of attributes makes them hard to read when perusing a keyring
  49 file.
  50 .PP
  51 It is not envisaged that the file format will change in the future.  Any
  52 extensions will be made by defining new attributes.
  53 .SH AUTHOR
  54 Mark Wooding, <mdw@nsict.org>