I'm considering (though I'm rapidly going off the idea at the moment) using seahorse and gnome-keyring to manage passwords/keys etc.
None of the manuals gives a clue as to what they all actually *do*. All you get is information about the mechanics of entering data into seahorse etc. which is pretty straightforward and obvious anyway.
I want to know how it actually works to make keeping keys etc. easier and to make logging in to other systems easier. At present I do things manually by editing and copying the various files in $HOME/.ssh directly myself. I don't run ssh-agent, I *assume* that gnome-keyring is a sort of replacement for that but can't find anything that tells me anything actually useful.
What concerns me slightly is that it's all a total waste of time if it's only protected by my login password which I think, by default, it is. I.e. if I understand things right (and I'm not at all sure about this) when I log in to the X gui and enter my password then gnome-keyring (and/or seahorse) extracts my key[s] from somewhere and then when I ssh to other systems that key is used and I don't have to type it in. Have I got that anything like right?
If this *is* the way that it works how is it even remotely more secure than simply using password login on those systems I ssh into?
If not can someone clarify a bit for me, or, as I said, point me at some sort of overview document that explains things.