Monkeysphere User README ======================== As a regular user on a system where the monkeysphere package is installed, you probably want to do a few things: Keeping your keyring up-to-date ------------------------------- Regularly refresh your GnuPG keyring from the keyservers. This can be done with a simple cronjob. An example of crontab line to do this is: 0 12 * * * /usr/bin/gpg --refresh-keys > /dev/null 2>&1 This would refresh your keychain every day at noon. Keeping your known_hosts file in sync with your keyring ------------------------------------------------------- With your keyring updated, you want to make sure that openssh can still see the most recent trusted information about who the various hosts are. This can be done with the monkeysphere-ssh-proxycommand (see next section) or with the update-known_hosts command: $ monkeysphere update-known_hosts This will command will check to see if there is an openpgp key for each (non-hashed) host listed in the known_hosts file, and then add the key for that host to the known_hosts file if one is found. This command could be added to a crontab as well, if desired. Using monkeysphere-ssh-proxycommand(1) -------------------------------------- The best way to handle host keys is to use the monkeysphere ssh proxy command. This command will make sure the known_hosts file is up-to-date for the host you are connecting to with ssh. The best way to integrate this is to add the following line to the "Host *" section of your ~/.ssh/config file: ProxyCommand monkeysphere-ssh-proxycommand %h %p Setting up an OpenPGP authentication key ---------------------------------------- First things first: you'll need to create a new subkey for your current key, if you don't already have one. If your OpenPGP key is keyid $GPGID, you can set up such a subkey relatively easily with: $ monkeysphere gen-subkey $GPGID Using your OpenPGP authentication key for SSH --------------------------------------------- FIXME: Sending the key to the ssh-agent? FIXME: using the key with a single session? NOTE: the current version of openpgp2ssh does *not* deal well with encrypted keys (as of 2008-07-26) Miscellaneous ------------- Users can also maintain their own authorized_keys files, for users that would be logging into their accounts. This is primarily useful for accounts on hosts that are not already systematically using the monkeysphere for user authentication. If you're not sure whether this is the case for your host, ask your system administrator. If you want to do this as a regular user, use the update-authorized_keys command: $ monkeysphere update-authorized_keys This command will take all the user IDs listed in the ~/.config/monkeysphere/authorized_user_ids file and check to see if there are acceptable keys for those user IDs available. If so, they will be added to the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file. You must have indicated reasonable ownertrust in some key for this account, or no keys will be found with trusted certification paths. If you find this useful, you might want to place a job like this in your crontab so that revocations and rekeyings can take place automatically.