Mailing List Archive: GnuPG: users

Exporting & Importing Public Keys

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petr at ics

Jun 29, 1999, 8:07 AM

Post #1 of 4 (248 views)
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Exporting & Importing Public Keys

Hallo,

I am new here, so my question may be silly.
I have a problem with exporting and importing public keys.

User A exported his key using the command:
gpg --export A > a-key.pub

User B imported his key using the command:
gpg --import a-key.pub

Then B did run
gpg --edit-key A

and set
trust: full

It showed this message:
pub 1024D/6C8E3EDD created: 1999-06-29 expires: never trust: f/q
sub 1024g/C8AD5FCB created: 1999-06-29 expires: never
(1) A

Then A exited the program and wanted to encrypt a file "trial.txt":
gpg -e -r A trial.txt

And he got this message:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Could not find a valid trust path to the key. Let's see whether we
can assign some missing owner trust values.

No path leading to one of our keys found.

1024g/C8AD5FCB 1999-06-29 "A"

It is NOT certain that the key belongs to its owner.
If you *really* know what you are doing, you may answer
the next question with yes

Use this key anyway?
------------------------------------------------------------------------

He tried again:
gpg -e -r --yes A trial.txt

But he he is getting still the same.
He needs to run the command non-interactively.

Any ideas?

Thank you in advance,
Petr Danecek

wk at isil

Jun 29, 1999, 9:11 AM

Post #2 of 4 (244 views)
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Re: Exporting & Importing Public Keys [In reply to]

Petr Danecek <petr [at] ics> writes:

> I am new here, so my question may be silly.
> I have a problem with exporting and importing public keys.

We have some quite good HOWTOs which explain all this stuff.

http://www.gnupg.org/docs.html

--
Werner Koch at guug.de www.openIT.de keyid 621CC013

Kevin.Turner at oberlin

Jun 29, 1999, 11:32 AM

Post #3 of 4 (240 views)
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Re: Exporting & Importing Public Keys [In reply to]

On Tue, Jun 29, 1999 at 05:07:24PM +0200, Petr Danecek wrote:
[...]
> and set
> trust: full
[...]
>
> Could not find a valid trust path to the key. Let's see whether we
> can assign some missing owner trust values.
[...]
> It is NOT certain that the key belongs to its owner.
[...]

This is the second time people have gotten stuck on this in the past few
days. Perhaps the warning message about a vaild trust path should
remind the user that the trust path is built on key /signatures/?

I admit that this one caught me when I first started using gnupg as
well, even after being moderately well-read in the pgp trust mechanism.
I was used to having two trust parameters -- "do you trust this key
belongs to the name on it?" and "do you trust this key to sign others?"
When I started using gpg's 'edit-key' interface, I was confused as to
why there was only a single "trust" option, and further confused when
setting this "trust" option did not result in the key being trusted.

Bring on the verbosity,
- Kevin

--
Kevin.Turner [at] oberlin | OpenPGP encryption welcome here, see X-DSA-Key

wk at isil

Jun 29, 1999, 12:56 PM

Post #4 of 4 (230 views)
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Re: Exporting & Importing Public Keys [In reply to]

Kevin Turner <Kevin.Turner [at] oberlin> writes:

> I was used to having two trust parameters -- "do you trust this key
> belongs to the name on it?" and "do you trust this key to sign others?"

The difference here is that GnuPG does not calculate the validity of a
key as soon as it is imported, but at the time the key is used. You
have both questions. The --edit menu should normally not be needed as
GnuPG will ask for it when there is not valid.

You are right, we need to clarify this better.

--
Werner Koch at guug.de www.openIT.de keyid 621CC013

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