Your Gale id (e.g., bob@dom.ain) is a location, just like pub@ofb.net. Just as it's possible to post to sublocations of this hierarchy (e.g., pub.hello@ofb.net and pub.news@ofb.net), it's possible to create sublocations of your own userid. Possible uses of such sublocations include locations for incoming mail notification (bob.mail@dom.ain), or gateways from other instant messaging systems (bob.icq@dom.ain). By default, you cannot puff to arbitrary sublocations of your user location. This document will tell you how to make these sublocations exist. However, we leave it up to you to figure out how to gateway messages from other IM systems to your sublocations.
Suppose you want anyone to be able to puff to arbitrary sublocations of your userid. You need to create a wildcard key, as follows:
% gkgen -m bob@dom.ain bob.\*@dom.ain ! 2001-10-11 22:35:16 gkgen notice: generating key, please wait... ! 2001-10-11 22:35:17 gkgen notice: wrote "/home/bob/.gale/auth/private/bob.*@do m.ain.gpub" ! 2001-10-11 22:35:17 gkgen notice: wrote "/home/bob/.gale/auth/private/bob.*@do m.ain.gpri" ! 2001-10-11 22:35:17 gkgen notice: wrote "/usr/local/etc/gale/auth/cache/bob.*@ dom.ain.gpub" |
The "-m bob@dom.ain" option to gkgen indicates that you are creating the bob.\*@dom.ain subkey with bob@dom.ain as a member. Having your own id as a member means that all messages sent to sublocations of your userid will be encrypted to you, and you will be able to decrypt messages sent to this location.