PUBLICKEY(5)

NAME
publickey - public key database

SYNOPSIS
/etc/publickey

DESCRIPTION

/etc/publickey is the public key database used for secure networking. Each entry in the database consists of a network user name (which may either refer to a user or a hostname), followed by the user's public key (in hex notation), a colon, and then the user's secret key encrypted with its login password (also in hex notation).

This file is altered either by the user through the chkey(1) command or by the system administrator through the newkey(8) command. The file /etc/publickey should only contain data on the Network Information Service (NIS) master machine, where it is converted into the NIS database publickey.byname.

The /etc/publickey file contains a default entry for nobody. If this entry is commented out, chkey only allows user to edit their existing entry, it will not allow them to create new entries.

SEE ALSO
chkey(1), publickey(3R), newkey(8), ypupdated(8C)

NOTES

The Network Information Service (NIS) was formerly known as Sun Yellow Pages (YP). The functionality of the two remains the same; only the name has changed.