dirmngr system integration
==========================

Since 2.1.x, gpg and most related processes will auto-launch dirmngr
if needed.  These auto-launched processes will inherit whatever
environment they started from, and they will not terminate
automatically.

systemd
=======

Since 2.1.17, users on machines with systemd will have a dirmngr
process launched automatically by systemd's user session, upon first
access of the standard socket.  systemd will also cleanly tear this
process down at session logout.

Users who don't want systemd to manage their dirmngr in this way for
all future sessions should do:

    systemctl --user mask --now dirmngr.socket

Doing this means that dirmngr will fall back to its manual mode of
operation.  (This decision can be reversed by the user with "unmask"
instead of "mask")

See systemctl(1) for more details about managing the dirmngr.socket
unit.

Manual dirmngr startup and teardown
===================================

Any user who wants to launch dirmngr manually (e.g., to talk to it
with a tool from outside the GnuPG suite) and is *not* using systemd
should first ensure that it is launched with:

   gpgconf --launch dirmngr

If dirmngr is launched manually or automatically (but not supervised
by systemd), you also probably want to ensure that it terminates when
your session ends with:

   gpgconf --kill dirmngr

If you're not using systemd, you may wish to add this command to your
session logout scripts.

 -- Daniel Kahn Gillmor <dkg@fifthhorseman.net>, Mon, 23 Jan 2017 22:49:45 -0500