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PKS-INTRO(8)           DragonFly System Manager's Manual          PKS-INTRO(8)


NAME

       pks-intro - OpenPGP Public Key Server Introduction


DESCRIPTION

       The OpenPGP Public Key Server system is a set of programs which manages
       and provides general access to a database of OpenPGP public keys.

       The database itself is not a standard OpenPGP keyring.  Instead, the
       keys which are managed by the server are stored in a set of Berkeley DB
       2.x format database files.  Most operations only take a fraction of a
       second, and even large operations involving tens of thousands of keys
       usually take only a few minutes.

   Programs
       pksclient(8)
              This is a command-line program for managing the database.  It
              supports All the operations of the daemon, and a few more.

       pksd(8)
              This is the public key server daemon.  It processes HTTP
              requests and mail requests to add keys to the database and query
              the database contents.

       pksdctl(8)
              This is a helper program used by pksd-mail.sh and
              pksd-queue-run.sh.

       pks-mail.sh
              This script is run for each mail message received to queue the
              message.

       pks-queue-run.sh
              This script is used to process the queue of incoming mail
              messages.

   Configuration files and data files
       pksd.conf(5)
              This file contains all the configuration data needed to run the
              system.

       <db_dir>/keydbXXX
              These files contain the actual database.  The first files
              contain the OpenPGP key information, indexed by the key ID.  The
              XXX is 000, 001, 002, up to the number of key database files
              minus 1.

       <db_dir>/num_keydb
              This file contains the number of key database files.  In order
              to handle very large databases on operating systems with limited
              file sizes, the key database can be split into up to 1000
              separate files.

       <db_dir>/timedb
              This file indexes the key ID's by the time they were added to
              the database.

       <db_dir>/worddb
              This file indexes the key ID's by the words in the key's user
              ID's.


SEARCHING

       The search engine is not the same as that used by the gpg(1) or pgp(1)
       programs.  It will return information for all keys which contain all
       the words in the search string.  A ``word'' in this context is a string
       of consecutive alphabetic characters.  For example, in the string
       user@example.com, the words are user, example, and com.


DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

       pksd uses the locking, logging, and transaction facilities of Berkeley
       DB.  This provides for added safety in the event of a server crash, and
       also allows for multiple pksd and/or pksclient processes to access the
       database at the same time.

       This does make management of a key server a little more complicated.
       The Berkeley DB reference section on Berkeley DB Transactional Access
       Methods Applications
       <http://www.sleepycat.com/docs/ref/toc.html#transapp>
       describes the procedures and commands which are used for checkpointing,
       archive (backup), and recovery.  You should familiarize yourself with
       this information before running a key server.


DESIGN

       The key server was Marc Horowitz's Advanced Undergraduate Project
       (which is really a thesis, but with a different name) for his
       Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Engineering at the
       Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  You can read detailed
       discussion of the internals of this key server, you can read the his
       AUP at
       <http://www.mit.edu/people/marc/pks/thesis.html>.


FILES

       pksd.conf, <db_dir>/keydbXXX, <db_dir>/num_keydb, <db_dir>/timedb,
       <db_dir>/worddb


AUTHOR

       Marc Horowitz, Massachusetts Institute of Technology


BUGS

       Visit the bug tracking system linked from
       http://sourceforge.net/projects/pks to view or report bugs.


COPYRIGHT

       Copyright (c) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, Marc Horowitz.  All rights
       reserved.

       This software doesn't have a warranty, express or implied. See the
       LICENSE file in the source distribution for full conditions.


SEE ALSO

       gpg(1), pgp(1), pksclient(8), pksd(8), pksd.conf(5), pksdctl(8),pks-
       mail.sh(8), pks-queue-run(8)

                                24 January 1996                   PKS-INTRO(8)

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