doc/README



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

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.