MUNGE(1)

📦
version 0.5.18 · 5 versions
, in arch rolling, fedora 43, fedora 44, nixpkgs unstable

💖 MUNGE — the MUNGE credential encoder, bestie edition 💖

okay so welcome to the munge(1) manual page, from the MUNGE Uid 'N' Gid Emporium (yes that's literally what it's called, iconic name, no notes) 💅

✨ NAME ✨

munge — the MUNGE credential encoder 🎀

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

munge [OPTION]...

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So here's the vibe, bestie: the munge program creates an MUNGE credential that contains the UID and GID of the calling process. That's the whole point of it, that's its main character energy. 🫶

And because that's not enough slay, you can also encapsulate additional payload data (up to 1 MB) in there as well. Then you can pass that returned credential to another process, and that process can validate its contents (like, for example, via the unmunge program ✨). Which means an unrelated and potentially remote process can figure out the identity of the calling process. fr fr, that's the whole trick.

By default, payload input is read from stdin and the credential is written to stdout. Defaults, we love them. 💖

👑 OPTIONS 👑

  • -h, --help — shows you a summary of the command-line options. ur lil cheat sheet 🎀
  • -L, --license — displays license information 📜
  • -V, --version — displays version information ⭐
  • -n, --no-input — discards all input for the payload. bye bye payload 🙈
  • -s, --string string — takes the input payload from the specified string 🍓
  • -i, --input path — takes the input payload from the specified file 📁
  • -o, --output path — writes the credential out to the specified file 💾
  • -c, --cipher string — specify the cipher type, either by name or by number 🔐
  • -C, --list-ciphers — displays a list of supported cipher types 📋
  • -m, --mac string — specify the MAC type, either by name or by number 🖋️
  • -M, --list-macs — displays a list of supported MAC types 📋
  • -z, --zip string — specify the compression type, either by name or by number 🗜️
  • -Z, --list-zips — displays a list of supported compression types 📋
  • -u, --restrict-uid uid — specify the user name or UID that's allowed to decode the credential. This gets matched against the effective user ID of the process requesting the credential decode 👀
  • -U, --uid uid — specify the user name or UID under which to request the credential. This requires root privileges or the CAP_SETUID capability. so like, powerful, respect it 💀
  • -g, --restrict-gid gid — specify the group name or GID that's allowed to decode the credential. This gets matched against the effective group ID of the process requesting the credential decode, AND against each supplementary group of which the effective user ID of that process is a member. yes, all of them 🫶
  • -G, --gid gid — specify the group name or GID under which to request the credential. This requires root privileges or the CAP_SETGID capability 👑
  • -t, --ttl seconds — specify the time-to-live, in seconds. This controls how long the credential stays valid once it has been encoded ⏳ A value of 0 selects the default TTL. A value of -1 selects the maximum allowed TTL. And heads up bestie: munged can impose a maximum allowable TTL for all credentials which may be smaller than this value. so like, don't get too attached to ur number 😭
  • -S, --socket path — specify the local socket for connecting with munged 🔌

💀 EXIT STATUS 💀

The munge program returns a zero exit code when the credential is successfully created and returned. 🎉

On error, it prints an error message to stderr and returns a non-zero exit code. that's the sad path, we don't talk about it 🙈

🧚 AUTHOR 🧚

Chris Dunlap <cdunlap@llnl.gov> 💜

Copyright (C) 2007-2025 Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC. Copyright (C) 2002-2007 The Regents of the University of California.

MUNGE is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

Additionally for the MUNGE library (libmunge), you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

yes the licensing section is long and yes you should still read it, it's giving responsible queen 💅

🫶 SEE ALSO 🫶

remunge(1), unmunge(1), munge(3), munge_ctx(3), munge_enum(3), munge(7), munged(8), mungekey(8).

https://github.com/dun/munge

and that's the page, bestie!! 💖✨ this was munge-0.5.18, dated 2026-02-10, and it's the MUNGE(1) page — go forth and encode some credentials, u absolute icon 👑🎀

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