keyserv is a daemon that is used for storing the private encryption keys of each user logged into the system. These encryption keys are used for accessing secure network services such as secure NFS and NIS+.

Normally, root's key is read from the file /etc/.rootkey when the daemon is started. This is useful during power-fail reboots when no one is around to type a password.

keyserv will not start up if the system does not have a secure rpc domain configured. Set up the domain name by using the /usr/bin/domainname command. Usually the /etc/init.d/inetinit script reads the domain from /etc/defaultdomain. Invoking the domainname command without arguments tells you if you have a domain set up.

The /etc/default/keyserv file contains the following default parameter settings. See FILES.

ENABLE_NOBODY_KEYS

Specifies whether default keys for nobody are used. ENABLE_NOBODY_KEYS=NO is equivalent to the -d command-line option. The default value for ENABLE_NOBODY_KEYS is YES.

-c

Do not use disk caches. This option overrides any -s option.

-D

Run in debugging mode and log all requests to keyserv.

-d

Disable the use of default keys for nobody. See FILES.

-e

Enable the use of default keys for nobody. This is the default behavior. See FILES.

-n

Root's secret key is not read from /etc/.rootkey. Instead, keyserv prompts the user for the password to decrypt root's key stored in the publickey database and then stores the decrypted key in /etc/.rootkey for future use. This option is useful if the /etc/.rootkey file ever gets out of date or corrupted.

-s sizespec

Specify the size of the extended Diffie-Hellman common key disk caches. The sizespec can be one of the following forms:

mechtype=size

size is an integer specifying the maximum number of entries in the cache, or an integer immediately followed by the letter M, denoting the maximum size in MB.

size

This form of sizespec applies to all caches.

See nisauthconf(1M) for mechanism types. Note that the des mechanism, AUTH_DES, does not use a disk cache.

/etc/.rootkey

/etc/default/keyserv

Contains default settings. You can use command-line options to override these settings.

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

keylogin(1), keylogout(1), nisauthconf(1M), publickey(4), attributes(5)

NIS+ might not be supported in future releases of the Solaris Operating Environment. Tools to aid the migration from NIS+ to LDAP are available in the Solaris 9 operating environment. For more information, visit http://www.sun.com/directory/nisplus/transition.html.