MUNGEKEY(8)

📦
version 0.5.18 · 4 versions
, in arch rolling, fedora 43, fedora 44, nixpkgs unstable

💖 MUNGEKEY(8) — the MUNGE key management utility 💖

okay so bestie, quick vibe check: this is section 8 of the manual (that's the sysadmin-y one 🫶), and it lives in the MUNGE Uid 'N' Gid Emporium. That's the whole title situation, we're moving on.

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

mungekey [-c] [-b bits] [-f] [-k keyfile] [-v]

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

So mungekey is literally the key management utility for MUNGE. And the rules are the rules, babe: it should be run by the same user that starts the munged daemon. Same user, no exceptions, that's the assignment. 💅

If you pass no options at all, mungekey will try to create a brand new key using the default settings. Cute! Iconic! But here's the catch — that will fail if the keyfile already exists. Like, it's not gonna overwrite your stuff behind your back, she's polite. 🙈

Now the part that actually matters, and I need you to lock in for this one: all munged daemons within a security realm must use the same key. Read that again. In other words — every host inside an administrative group (or cluster) that's using MUNGE for authentication has to use the same key. So the move is: create this keyfile on one host, then securely copy it to all the other hosts. One key to rule them all, periodt. 👑

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

  • -b, --bits integer — pick how many bits go in the key being created, range is [256-8192]. More bits, more ✨security✨.
  • -c, --create — create a new keyfile. Fresh out the oven, just for you. 🍓
  • -f, --force — force the keyfile to get overwritten if it already exists. She will absolutely bulldoze what's there, so know what you're doing. 😭
  • -h, --help — show a lil summary of the command-line options. Your friendly lil cheat sheet.
  • -k, --keyfile path — tell her the keyfile pathname you want.
  • -L, --license — display license information. Legal girlies rise. ⭐
  • -v, --verbose — be verbose. She'll tell you everything that's happening, no gatekeeping.
  • -V, --version — display version information. Slay.

🦋 FILES 🦋

  • /etc/munge/munge.key — contains the shared cryptographic key for hosts within the security realm. This is the file, the main character of the whole operation. 👑

💜 AUTHOR 💜

Chris Dunlap <cdunlap@llnl.gov> — give him his flowers, fr fr. 🌸

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.

bestie this is the actual license text and it's legally load-bearing, so I kept it exactly as-is. Don't paraphrase licenses, that's not the vibe. 🫶

💀 SEE ALSO 💀

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

https://github.com/dun/munge

and that's the whole page, no cap. this lil masterpiece is from munge-0.5.18, dated 2026-02-10 — so if you're reading this from the future, hiii, hope your keyfile is safe. 😭✨🫶

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