chkey

- change user's secure RPC key pair

Synopsis

chkey [-p] [-s nis | files | ldap] 
     [-m <mechanism>]

Description

chkey is used to change a user's secure RPC public key and secret key pair. chkey prompts for the old secure-rpc password and verifies that it is correct by decrypting the secret key. If the user has not already used keylogin(1) to decrypt and store the secret key with keyserv(1M), chkey registers the secret key with the local keyserv(1M) daemon. If the secure-rpc password does not match the login password, chkey prompts for the login password. chkey uses the login password to encrypt the user's secret Diffie-Hellman (192 bit) cryptographic key. chkey can also encrypt other Diffie-Hellman keys for authentication mechanisms configured.

chkey ensures that the login password and the secure-rpc password(s) are kept the same, thus enabling password shadowing. See shadow(4).

The key pair can be stored in the /etc/publickey file (see publickey(4)) or the NIS publickey map. If a new secret key is generated, it will be registered with the local keyserv(1M) daemon.

Keys for specific mechanisms can be changed or re-encrypted using the -m option followed by the authentication mechanism name. Multiple -m options can be used to change one or more keys.

If the source of the publickey is not specified with the -s option, chkey consults the publickey entry in the name service switch configuration file. See nsswitch.conf(4). If the publickey entry specifies one and only one source, then chkey will change the key in the specified name service. However, if multiple name services are listed, chkey can not decide which source to update and will display an error message. The user should specify the source explicitly with the -s option.

Non root users are not allowed to change their key pair in the files database.

Options

The following options are supported:

-p

Re-encrypt the existing secret key with the user's login password.

-s nis

Update the NIS database.

-s files

Update the files database.

-s ldap

Update the LDAP database.

-m <mechanism>

Changes or re-encrypt the secret key for the specified mechanism.

Files

/etc/nsswitch.conf

/etc/publickey

Attributes

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

See Also

keylogin(1), keylogout(1), keyserv(1M), newkey(1M), nsswitch.conf(4), publickey(4), shadow(4), attributes(5)