It's a sort of cache for avoiding to retype passwords and passphrases.
NOTE
By the way, if you get error or warning messages upon logout or shutdown and confirm on /var/adm/messages some entry related to gnome-keyring-daemon.desktop, then try to manually create the missing file:
$ touch ~/.gnome2/keyrings/gnome-keyring-daemon.desktop
$ ll ~/.gnome2/keyrings |grep desktop
-rw------- 1 ... 0 ... gnome-keyring-daemon.desktop
My goal here is to reduce the amount of passphrases I have to type.
Configuring the GNOME Keyrings for passphrases isn't difficult at all. After having installed Seahorse I simply go to System | Preferences | Encryption and Keyrings. Then, it suffices to set the options that best suit the needs.
It's possible to specify the default PGP key.
This is set on the Encryption tab:
The preceding info applies to passphrases only.
What is somewhat unexpected is that passwords are managed differently.
Go back to Seahorse through the main GNOME Applications menu ( Alt + F1 ).
