Mailing List Archive: GnuPG: users

Decryption Fails on UserName but not on EmailAddress ???

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nschroth at fuse

Sep 25, 2009, 4:19 PM

Post #1 of 8 (1383 views)
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Decryption Fails on UserName but not on EmailAddress ???

I have been reading previous posts on this topic but have not found my
answer.
When I ENcrypt on BoxA using -r UserName, decryption on BoxB errors with :
"decryption failed: secret key not available".
However, doing the same test using the email address associated with the
recipient, Decryption WORKS.

Can anyone offer some reasons for this? Did we gen or export or import the
key incorrectly?

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nschroth at fuse

Sep 24, 2009, 9:19 AM

Post #2 of 8 (1332 views)
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Decryption Fails on UserName but not on EmailAddress ??? [In reply to]

dshaw at jabberwocky

Sep 25, 2009, 4:42 PM

Post #3 of 8 (1350 views)
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Re: Decryption Fails on UserName but not on EmailAddress ??? [In reply to]

On Sep 25, 2009, at 7:19 PM, nschroth wrote:

>
> I have been reading previous posts on this topic but have not found my
> answer.
> When I ENcrypt on BoxA using -r UserName, decryption on BoxB errors
> with :
> "decryption failed: secret key not available".
> However, doing the same test using the email address associated with
> the
> recipient, Decryption WORKS.

It sounds like you have two keys. When you use "-r username" you're
matching one of them. When you use "-r emailaddress [at] example"
you're matching the other one.

Check your keyring to be sure: do a "gpg --list-keys username" to see
all keys that match that name.

David

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laurent.jumet at skynet

Sep 25, 2009, 11:40 PM

Post #4 of 8 (1336 views)
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Re: Decryption Fails on UserName but not on EmailAddress ??? [In reply to]

Hello nschroth !

nschroth <nschroth [at] fuse> wrote:

> I have been reading previous posts on this topic but have not found my
> answer.
> When I ENcrypt on BoxA using -r UserName, decryption on BoxB errors with :
> "decryption failed: secret key not available".
> However, doing the same test using the email address associated with the
> recipient, Decryption WORKS.
> Can anyone offer some reasons for this? Did we gen or export or import the
> key incorrectly?

May be there are two similar usernames or part of them in your keyring.

--
Laurent Jumet
KeyID: 0xCFAF704C

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nschroth at fuse

Sep 26, 2009, 7:48 AM

Post #5 of 8 (1337 views)
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Re: Decryption Fails on UserName but not on EmailAddress ??? [In reply to]

David,

On the target (recipient) machine:
--list-keys shows my Primary Key, My desktop Key and a co-worker's desktop
key
--list-secret-keys shows only my Primary Ke
--list-keys PrimaryKeyUserName it only lists my primary key.

This has happen when a file was encrypted from EITHER my desktop or
mycoworker's desktop.

Nelson

David Shaw wrote:
>
> On Sep 25, 2009, at 7:19 PM, nschroth wrote:
>
>>
>> I have been reading previous posts on this topic but have not found my
>> answer.
>> When I ENcrypt on BoxA using -r UserName, decryption on BoxB errors
>> with :
>> "decryption failed: secret key not available".
>> However, doing the same test using the email address associated with
>> the
>> recipient, Decryption WORKS.
>
> It sounds like you have two keys. When you use "-r username" you're
> matching one of them. When you use "-r emailaddress [at] example"
> you're matching the other one.
>
> Check your keyring to be sure: do a "gpg --list-keys username" to see
> all keys that match that name.
>
> David
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Gnupg-users mailing list
> Gnupg-users [at] gnupg
> http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users
>
>

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kloecker at kde

Sep 26, 2009, 8:26 AM

Post #6 of 8 (1324 views)
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Re: Decryption Fails on UserName but not on EmailAddress ??? [In reply to]

On Saturday 26 September 2009, nschroth wrote:
> David,
>
> On the target (recipient) machine:
> --list-keys shows my Primary Key, My desktop Key and a co-worker's
> desktop key
> --list-secret-keys shows only my Primary Ke
> --list-keys PrimaryKeyUserName it only lists my primary key.
>
> This has happen when a file was encrypted from EITHER my desktop or
> mycoworker's desktop.

You have to check the source (sender) machine. The wrong key is used
during encryption.

Regards,

Ingo

> David Shaw wrote:
> > On Sep 25, 2009, at 7:19 PM, nschroth wrote:
> >> I have been reading previous posts on this topic but have not
> >> found my answer.
> >> When I ENcrypt on BoxA using -r UserName, decryption on BoxB
> >> errors with :
> >> "decryption failed: secret key not available".
> >> However, doing the same test using the email address associated
> >> with the
> >> recipient, Decryption WORKS.
> >
> > It sounds like you have two keys. When you use "-r username"
> > you're matching one of them. When you use "-r
> > emailaddress [at] example" you're matching the other one.
> >
> > Check your keyring to be sure: do a "gpg --list-keys username" to
> > see all keys that match that name.
> >
> > David
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Gnupg-users mailing list
> > Gnupg-users [at] gnupg
> > http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users

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nschroth at fuse

Sep 29, 2009, 5:10 AM

Post #7 of 8 (1299 views)
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Re: Decryption Fails on UserName but not on EmailAddress ??? [In reply to]

Interesting. The key is not listed twice, but...

--list-keys PrimaryUserName shows ALL THREE keys while
--list-keys PrimaryEmailAddress shows only the primary host key.

Could it be that the name I used for the primary key was CompanyName and
the email addresses for all the people had that as their domain (ex:
Bill [at] companyname) ???

nschroth wrote:
>
> I have been reading previous posts on this topic but have not found my
> answer.
> When I ENcrypt on BoxA using -r UserName, decryption on BoxB errors with :
> "decryption failed: secret key not available".
> However, doing the same test using the email address associated with the
> recipient, Decryption WORKS.
>
> Can anyone offer some reasons for this? Did we gen or export or import
> the key incorrectly?
>
>
>
>

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kloecker at kde

Sep 30, 2009, 3:21 PM

Post #8 of 8 (1288 views)
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Re: Decryption Fails on UserName but not on EmailAddress ??? [In reply to]

On Tuesday 29 September 2009, nschroth wrote:
> Interesting. The key is not listed twice, but...
>
> --list-keys PrimaryUserName shows ALL THREE keys while
> --list-keys PrimaryEmailAddress shows only the primary host key.
>
> Could it be that the name I used for the primary key was CompanyName
> and the email addresses for all the people had that as their domain
> (ex: Bill [at] companyname) ???

Makes sense.
gpg --list-keys foo
will list all keys where one of the user IDs contains the three
letters "foo" (substring match).

Please read the section "HOW TO SPECIFY A USER ID" in the manual page of
gpg (man gpg) for the different possibilities to specify what key(s) to
use for some operation with gpg.

Regards,
Ingo

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